Mere Orthodoxy November 10, 2026 13 min signal 2026-11-10

A shared commitment to liberty and virtue

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Stephanie Slade. Fusionism: Liberty, Virtue, and the Future of the American Right. $30.00. 304 pp.

What makes for a flourishing society, and what is required to sustain it? In her new book, Fusionism: Liberty, Virtue, and the Future of the American Right, Stephanie Slade, a writer for the libertarian journal Reason, argues that a flourishing society requires a shared commitment to both liberty and virtue. She contends that the conservative movement in the 20th century at its best was devoted to both of these ideals—to the protection of personal, political, and economic freedom and to the fostering and encouragement of moral goodness in the culture. In recent decades, however, the movement has been replaced by the “Dissident Right,” and has abandoned both liberty and virtue in favor of a hodgepodge of restrictionist economic policies and a political posture defined by a hatred of the American left. This rejection of fusionism is no small matter, Slade argues, since human societies thrive best when people use their freedoms to pursue virtue in their lives and in their communities.

The hero (if not the founder) of the fusionist movement was Frank Meyer, a longtime editor and writer for National Review from the 1950s to 1970s. An ex-Communist, he saw himself primarily as an articulator of truths that had been around for centuries, although in his day his goal was to marry the ideas of Friedrich Hayek and Russell Kirk, both of whom were fusionists in their thinking. Hayek’s Road to Serfdom saw the great challenge for America and the West as a resistance to the temptations of a benevolent government management of the economy. Kirk, while sympathetic to Hayek’s vision, saw the first priority for any society as conserving and improving the tradition handed down to it through the centuries. Meyer saw a healthy society as one that brings together the views of both Hayek and Kirk in a marriage of freedom and tradition, liberty and virtue. Slade quotes from an essay by George H. Nash in 2023: “What do conservatives want? To put it in elementary terms… they want to be free; they want to live meaningful and virtuous lives, and they want to be secure from threats beyond and within our borders.”

The fusionist project did not just live in the realm of ideas but was historically vindicated in the presidency of Ronald Reagan and the end of the Cold War. While not a culture warrior himself, Reagan was keen to sometimes use the power of the state to foster virtue, such as when he waged a “war on drugs” and pushed to give parochial schools the freedom to not hire gay faculty. At the same time, Reagan defended the freedom pillar of fusionism through tax cuts and economic deregulation. More importantly, however, the demise and defeat of Soviet communism was seen by the conservative movement as a practical vindication of the fusionist worldview. Fusionism therefore was no longer just a set of principles that may or may not have practical purchase; history had come to an end, and Frank Meyer’s vision could claim the final victory.

In Slade’s view, fusionism then became a victim of its own success, and the defenders of freedom and virtue became complacent. In fusionism’s place were all manner of alternatives, not just on the political left but also within the conservative movement itself. From Christian nationalists to “pitchfork populists” to “America First” paleoconservatives to neoconservatives, the American right since 1989 has been in search of something to hold it together. The movement in the post-Reagan years lacked both the leadership and a clear enemy to provide energy and cohesion to sustain its future development.

Slade’s story then reaches its apex in the presidency of Donald Trump, who has attempted to fill the leadership void, but in doing so departs from the fusionist project (and thus Reagan’s) in three key areas: his view of power, his attitude toward economics, and his use of rhetoric. On power, Trump is not just anti-fusionist, but un-American. “I alone can fix it” is anathema to the best of the American political tradition, one that is suspicious of anyone in power who would claim it all for himself. Worse than that, especially in the area of immigration enforcement, Trump has abandoned and even mocked the very idea of the rule of law. On economics, his embrace of tariffs departs not just from conservative views, but really the free trade orthodoxy of all presidents going back to Reagan. More than that, the picking of “winners and losers” in his industrial policy is more like crony capitalism than the free-market capitalism favored by Hayek. Finally, the name-calling, bullying, and stirring up of a hatred of the American left is the opposite of the virtue Meyer and Kirk have called for and antithetical to the civility of Reagan, who always referred to Democrats as his “opponents,” but never his “enemies.”

In her final chapter, Slade looks into the future and assesses the prospects of a renewal of American conservatism, calling for a recovery of the fusionist project. She recognizes that the prospects for such a retrieval are bleak, since voices on the left and on the right are increasingly statist in their political preferences. Still, she thinks the goal is worth pursuing, not to find vindication again but instead to foster the conditions that are necessary for human flourishing.

How then should we assess Slade’s account of American politics and the conservative movement, and is there something to be said for her call to bring fusionism back?

First, there is much to commend in Slade’s account for having continuity with the American political tradition. For one, the American founders generally believed that both the protection of liberty and the fostering of virtue were necessary for the republican experiment to work. Consider the example of James Madison, who in Federalist 10 entertained the possibility that the abolition of liberty would be necessary to prevent the formation of factious groups intent on the oppression of others. A merchant can never oppress a farmer if he lacks the freedom to do so—or so the argument goes. Madison makes quick work of these specious arguments when he observes that extinguishing freedom for the sake of preventing faction would be like abolishing air as a way to prevent fire. Even if possible, it would destroy the very purpose of the American republican experiment, which is to form a government with the goal of protecting and preserving freedom.

At the same time, Madison also argued that without virtue, the American republic will not be able to sustain itself. In the debates from the Virginia ratifying convention in 1788, Madison contended that while we can never expect our representatives to only exhibit “exalted integrity and sublime virtue,” he seemed to believe that there was enough moral goodness to go around, and more importantly, that if there is no virtue among the people, “we are in a wretched situation.”

But does the fusionist project meet the moment in 2026, contrary to what its “Dissident Right” critics seem to suggest? Niccolo Machiavelli argued in The Prince that political rulers must pursue “effectual truths,” having a firm footing in practical reality and not be taken by “imagined republics” that have never been realized. Does fusionism have a firm footing in reality?

As Yuval Levin recently argued in the wake of the 2026 midterms, we currently have a “politics without winners,” and the time may be ripe for a coherent vision to capture the electorate, not just on the right but in the body politic writ large. The left needs to figure out whether democratic socialism is a program worth getting behind in its fullness, and the right needs to determine what it stands for at all.

It seems clear enough that the presidency of Donald Trump has come to an end. According to NBC News exit polls, 44% of voters cited disapproval of Trump as one reason for their vote in the United States House elections. He will continue to be President for the next two years, but given the result of the midterms and Trump’s approval ratings in the low 30’s, his remaining time as President will likely be ineffective. More than that, Republicans’ massive losses in the midterms could serve to focus the minds of the movement and the party. Could fusionism be the way forward? Is there a practical opening for its recovery?

The answer here is complicated. It is clear that on the question of virtue, the American people (Republicans included) may be fed up with government corruption, as 55% of the general vote and 35% of Republicans cited the issue as “crucial” to their voting decisions. At the same time, only 14% of Republicans believe Trump’s policies (like tariffs or the Iran war) had a significant causal role to play in the higher prices they are paying at the pump and the grocery store. On the more specific question about tariffs, it is not clear that Republican voters see much of a connection between those policies and the state of the economy in general. While the free trade orthodoxy of the past has not exactly been replaced with a universal embrace of trade restriction, it’s not apparent that the fusionist call for economic freedom has a large constituency at the moment.

Further, if it is true that the Republican Party has become a party of the high school educated working class, will it be sufficient to embrace a limited government that seeks only to protect the trinitarian ideal of “life, liberty, and property”? While Slade may dispute this, the perception among working people is that the American dream is not available to them. A party that seeks to represent the interests of this class of people has felt—and will increasingly feel—pressure to use government as a tool for relief, whether through tariffs, wage subsidies, or other social programs. But that would be a betrayal of the freedom pillar of fusionism. The political prospects of the fusionist worldview would therefore seem to have some challenges ahead.

More than that, in reviewing the last 35 years of American conservatism, despite campaign slogans and lofty rhetoric, and despite Republican presidential candidates often posturing themselves as Reagan’s heir apparent, the actual legacy of fusionism and Reaganism is not straightforward or clear. For one, even on Slade’s account, Reagan himself was more pragmatist than ideologue, and while he did indeed believe in the importance of both liberty and virtue, his record on government spending was not Hayekian. Second, even before the emergence of Trump—and here I am simply agreeing with Slade’s telling of the story—conservatism has not been fusionist in practice. Consider President George H. W. Bush’s dismissal of Reaganomics as voodoo economics, or the emergence of “compassionate conservatism” in the administration of President George W. Bush, which critics dubbed “big-government conservatism.” Slade may reply that fusionism cannot be reduced to a political program but has always been a set of philosophical positions. Still, it is worth asking whether the “truths” of fusionism have ever been “effectual” if nobody has ever seen them practiced.

There is also the problem of the conservative movement’s acquiescence to a Presidency-centered political culture. Slade’s account is mostly about the fusionist movement as ideological, but it tends to elide the structural changes that provide its context. To put it another way, all of our debates tend to take for granted the centrality of the presidency in our system. It is not clear, however, that such an assumption is consistent with the liberty pillar of the fusionist vision. What could be more antithetical to liberty than placing so much confidence in a single political figure? When Trump convinced Republicans that “[he] alone can fix it,” he may have taken centralized power to a different level, but that message is also consistent with the modern presidency that finds its beginnings in Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt, both of whom delivered to the American consciousness a preference for the President as activist, popular leader, and even messiah. Until the conservative movement and America in general can come to terms with this, a call for a commitment to liberty is merely a form of words.

The question of timing can also be raised from a larger historical perspective. Political scientist Stephen Skowronek has argued that American political history can be divided into eras, each of which begins with a reconstructive President (like Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt) and ends with a disjunctive President who brings that era to an end (like Jimmy Carter). Reagan is the last reconstructive President in our history, and on Skowronek’s reading, Trump is disjunctive, bringing about the end of the conservative Reagan era. Reconstructive presidents, however, never recover something old, but only bring about something new. If this analysis holds any water, therefore, the next reconstructive President would likely not reconstitute the old fusionism but would inaugurate a whole new way of governing.

I think it is not right to take such a fatalistic view of history, as human beings in space and time are able to transcend their circumstances while also being constrained by them. Perhaps another Reagan is indeed on the horizon. More generally, I believe America desperately needs a party that is not in love with state power, and currently neither of our two major parties fits that bill. If ever there were a time for the Republican Party to embrace (again) the fusionist worldview, right now would seem to be it.

However, this leads to my last concern about Slade’s argument and the prospects of a fusionist revival. As she lays it out, fusionism marries liberty and virtue as complementary and mutually reinforcing ideals. That seems to be right, but another piece needs to be added: the whole project depends upon a particular kind of virtue, and that virtue is love.

To recover the virtue of love, the greatest virtue, is not a mechanical project and will not happen overnight. Instead it requires a kind of spiritual transformation, a periagogê or “turning around” towards the truth, as Plato, Jesus Christ, and the New Testament writers would have it. Yes, both leaders and citizens need to have the right set of virtues to lead well and to vote well. But it is striking how so many of the “Dissident Right” alternatives—from Bronze Age Pervert to post-liberals to neo-reactionaries—all lack a love of freedom, especially a freedom for all people to enjoy in equal measure.

In other words, one of the two pillars of the fusionist vision—the pillar of freedom—cannot be maintained unless the conservative movement and the American people in general actually want it to be maintained, truly desire for it to be protected, and really long for its promotion in the republic. To recall the words of James Madison in the Virginia State Ratifying Convention, a conservative movement and an America without the virtue of a love for freedom means we will have neither virtue nor freedom—a wretched condition indeed.

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Andrew Kaufmann

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Andrew Kaufmann

Andrew Kaufmann is an Associate Professor of Politics and Government at Bryan College in Dayton, TN. His main interests are in Christian political thought and how Christians should engage the public square. His expertise is in the history of political theory, specifically the political and religious thought of French philosopher Jacques Derrida.

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