In American politics, fusionism is the philosophical and political combination or "fusion" of traditionalist and social conservatism with political and economic right-libertarianism. Fusionism combines "free markets, social conservatism, and a hawkish foreign policy". The philosophy is most closely associated with Frank Meyer.
Intellectual founding and positions The philosophy of "fusionism" was developed at National Review magazine during the 1950s under the editorship of William F. Buckley Jr. and is most identified with his associate editor Frank Meyer. As Buckley recounted the founding, he "brokered" between "an extraordinary mix" of libertarians, traditional conservatives and anti-communists to produce the ideas and writings that composed modern conservatism. He identified Meyer's synthesis as the most likely best solution of defining conservatism. In 1960, a fusionist statement of principles, the Sharon Statement, was adopted at the inaugural meeting of the Young Americans for Freedom at Buckley's childhood home. In his most influential book, the 1962 In Defense of Freedom, Meyer defined freedom in what Isaiah Berlin would label "negative" terms as the minimization of the use of coercion by the state in its essential role of preventing one person's freedom from intruding upon another's. The state should protect freedom but otherwise leave virtue to individuals. The state has only three legitimate functions – police, military, and operating a legal system, all necessary to control coercion, which is immoral if not restricted. Virtue is critical for society, and freedom must be balanced by responsibility, but both are inherently individual in form. Coerced values cannot be virtuous. Freedom by itself has no goal, no intrinsic end. Freedom is not abstract or utopian, as with the utilitarians, who also make freedom an end rather than a means. In a real society, traditional order and freedom can only exist together. The solution is a philosophical synthesis of both freedom and tradition; the solution to the dilemma is "grasping it by both horns" and accepting the tension between the two. State promotion of virtue is inevitably the promotion of the preferences of the powerful. Meyer critiqued both libertarianism and traditionalism, but focused the majority of his writing on opposing traditionalist conservatives such as Russell Kirk. Fusionism found a strong advocate in Ronald Reagan, an early admirer of National Review and an associate of both editors. On assuming the presidency in 1981, he met with conservative leaders around the country in Washington and reminded them of their intellectual roots. After listing "intellectual leaders like Russell Kirk, Friedrich Hayek, Henry Hazlitt, Milton Friedman, James Burnham, [and] Ludwig von Mises" as the ones who "shaped so much of our thoughts," he discussed only one of these influences at length:
It's especially hard to believe that it was only a decade ago, on a cold April day on a small hill in upstate New York, that another of these great thinkers, Frank Meyer, was buried. He'd made the awful journey that so many others had: he pulled himself from the clutches of the [communist] God That Failed, and then in his writing fashioned a vigorous new synthesis of traditional and libertarian thought – a synthesis that is today recognized by many as modern conservatism. As he recalled him, the new president outlined the ideas Meyer synthesized as the principles for this new conservative movement.
It was Frank Meyer who reminded us that the robust individualism of the American experience was part of the deeper current of Western learning and culture. He pointed out that a respect for law, an appreciation for tradition, and regard for the social consensus that gives stability to our public and private institutions, these civilized ideas must still motivate us even as we seek a new economic prosperity based on reducing government interference in the marketplace. Our goals complement each other. We're not cutting the budget simply for the sake of sounder financial management. This is only a first step toward returning power to the states and communities, only a first step toward reordering the relationship between citizen and government. We can make government again responsive to the people by cutting its size and scope and thereby ensuring that its legitimate functions are performed efficiently and justly. Because ours is a consistent philosophy of government, we can be very clear: We do not have a separate social agenda, separate economic agenda, and a separate foreign agenda. We have one agenda. Just as surely as we seek to put our financial house in order and rebuild our nation's defenses, so too we seek to protect the unborn, to end the manipulation of schoolchildren by utopian planners, and permit the acknowledgement of a Supreme Being in our classrooms just as we allow such acknowledgements in other public institutions.
Political history
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