That both freedom and virtue are essential to human flourishing is one of the great truths of Western civilization and the Judeo-Christian ethic. The two can be in tension — freedom obviously subsumes the option to choose vice — but they are never in total conflict. Freedom is achieved primarily through the political world, and virtue primarily through intermediate institutions like family and church. Fusionism does not provide specific answers to many of the practical questions we face today, but it does provide a framework for thinking them through. It takes its foundations in theories of natural law going back centuries.
While the term “fusionism” has stuck, it should be remembered that it was coined by its opponents to attack the idea (nonetheless I will use “fusionism” in this piece as described in the first paragraph). It’s often suggested by current skeptics that fusionism may well have been an apt tool to fight communism, but its pragmatic value in that battle has become outdated.
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