Reagan's Fusionism Failing?
by Donald Devine

All of a sudden the “fusionist conservatism” of libertarian means and traditionalist ends that created the modern conservative movement is in the news, and under fire. Ryan Sager has written a book—The Elephant in the Room--on how the traditionalists have pushed aside the libertarians, selling out freedom by legislating traditional ends. As a result, CATOs Brink Lindsey went so far as to demand a “new fusionism” between his libertarians and liberal progressives as a better bargain for those who favor liberty.

The more traditionalist Intercollegiate Studies Institute’s Daniel McCarthy took just the opposite tack in an article in the Buchananite American Conservative magazine titled, “The Failure of Fusionism.” He labeled fusionism simply libertarianism with a mere rhetorical bow to traditionalism, a lowest common denominator for building a political alliance. The hip America’s Future Foundation recently held a debate on the future of endangered fusionism in which the political bargain rather than the merits of the philosophy dominated the discussion. In an essay in its “First Principles” series, The Heritage Foundation’s Distinguished Fellow Lee Edwards did come to fusionism’s defense on principled grounds but even there the political necessity for rebuilding a governing coalition took precedence as a motivation for its renewal.

At least there is vigorous discussion. This is a long way from when paleoconservative Chronicles editor Thomas Fleming declared fusionism dead in 2003 and claimed that no one under 60 years of age cared. His collaborator, the late Sam Francis was even more pithy--fusionism “died childless,” he taunted. It was this challenge that led to the launching of ConservativeBattleline in 2004 and to a debate in the magazine thereafter over the content and meaning of fusionism between the editor and Daniel Larison among others.

What is the debate all about? Before the 1950s there were no conservatives, only traditionalists and libertarians of various stripes. Under the prodding of National Review founding editor, William F, Buckley Jr., the brightest of these stripes were brought together in the practical task of publishing a magazine with some intellectual coherence. Out of those editorial debates and additional ones they generated in the surrounding New York City area, a philosophical synthesis was developed that became modern conservatism. It was especially developed into a coherent doctrine by NR editor Frank Meyer, whose philosophy was dubbed “fusionism” by one of the other editors, actually one who refused to be fused.

It is perhaps a paradox that it was a politician who not only communicated fusionism most effectively but also expressed its essence best. Ronald Reagan told a meeting of conservative leaders in Washington just after being sworn in as president:

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.

It was Meyer who “in his writing fashioned a vigorous new synthesis of traditional and libertarian thought -- a synthesis that is today recognized by many as modern conservatism.”

That synthesis or “tension” in Western political thought as Meyer called it consisted of both libertarian economic means and traditional value ends. Reagan, again, explained it as it related to his own program of reform:

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 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.

That synthesis built a modern conservative movement that culminated in the election of Reagan as president. In that office, he revolutionized American government. He cut discretionary domestic national government by 10 percent and even reduced all non-defense spending including entitlements from 17.9 to 16.4 percent of Gross Domestic Product. By achieving this and reducing the top marginal tax rate from 70 to 33 percent, he unleashed the private sector in a surge of growth that has not ended to this day and increased the relative role of state and local government, especially in advancing new programs. The following Democratic President Bill Clinton was forced rhetorically to claim the “era of big government is over” and even when the Democrats regained control of Congress in 2006, their first act was to require all new spending be accompanied by new sources of revenue, inhibiting their ability to create new programs.

But the critics are correct. The fusionist synthesis has decayed during the following years, primarily by those in his own political party, often in the name of conservatism. Federal government spending hit a half century high under George W. Bush, national regulation has increased, education, farm and transportation programs have metastasized, foreign policy has become increasingly interventionist and threatening to civil liberties and social issues like the family, marriage and research have become political issues. As a result, there has been a splitting back into the separate traditionalist and libertarian tribes of the pre-1950 era, including by the current editors of NR. Mr. Buckley himself has taken pains to separate himself from his own magazine’s editorial policy.

Any society is naturally split between different political tendencies. Political scientist Aaron Wildavsky identified four very broad cultural types: so called individualists, traditionalists (or deferentials in his terms), egalitarians and fatalists. One estimate a few years ago was that individualists (libertarians) represented 34 percent of the population, social conservatives (or traditionalists) equaled 22 percent, egalitarians (liberals) were 27 percent and fatalists 17 percent. On the basis of this division, Wildavsky concluded that all politics must be coalition politics, with no single one able to hold a reliable majority. The idea of unitary libertarian rule is especially problematical since most of the individualists in the study were also traditionalist in their social values.

Interestingly, Wildavsky claimed that the normal ruling coalition is the individualist/traditionalist one. They can cohere because they both basically hold a positive enough view of human nature to not require a strong central government to control an irretrievably nasty human nature. Individualists view nature as actually benign, encouraging individualism, experimentation, and entrepreneurship, believing that a "hidden hand" will make everything turn out right. Traditionalists are not so optimistic, but they do think nature can be at least tolerant for human social life if institutions like the family, church and community are vibrant and active in the community. Both limit government in favor of private institutions and differ from the egalitarians who view nature as ephemeral and fatalists who view it as actually capricious--both of which views require the strong hand of government to control harmful nature.

To even protect themselves from the governmental intrusions of the egalitarian-liberal and fatalist-conspiratorial types on the left and right, traditionalists and libertarians must respect each other’s bottom line values. Economic conservatives must be explicit that the traditional values are the goal, even if they stress more that the means should be voluntary ones. Social conservatives must recognize a difference between recognizing moral ills and the temptation of translating their solution into national laws, even if they must insist upon public discussion of the ultimate value-goals and their solution by voluntary and local means. If both conservative factions do not accommodate their natural allies, the other guys will determine what the goals are and use national government means to enforce them.

So there is a genuine concern for fusionism to create an effective political coalition. Ronald Reagan, Frank Meyer and most of the founders of the modern conservative movement, however, did not see the fusion as merely tactical or political. As Reagan put it, the libertarian means and traditionalist ends “complement each other.” Fusionism represents “a consistent philosophy of government.” Even the non theistic, economic conservative, F.A. Hayek, taught both are necessary. Freedom and markets cannot exist without a traditional, even religious, social order to sustain them. As social conservative Russell Kirk believed, the state is often the greatest threat to traditional values and institutions. A serious review of the major philosophers of tradition and liberty will find that the best in each school believed both were necessary.

The name fusionism is not important. A review of a new book of Kirk essays mentions that Kirk did not consider himself a fusionist. Neither did Meyer by that name but they both believed in a synthesis between tradition and freedom, order and reason. Indeed, as Meyer taught, Western civilization itself was and is a harmony of both. Not a simple uniform tune but a harmonic masterpiece, not simple libertarianism nor univocal traditionalism but both. As Reagan said, this “was part of the deeper current of Western learning and culture” that created Europe and its offspring and imitators around the world, very much including the United States. This vision has lost much of its inspirational force in Europe and is weakened in the U.S. But the AFF debate suggests that Reagan and Meyer have left some “children” to carry on the philosophy, or at least to continue the debate.

Donald Devine, the editor of Conservative Battleline Online, was the director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management from 1981 to 1985 and is the director of the Federalist Leadership Center at Bellevue University.