Fusionism: Its Relevance for Conservatives Endures

Who wants to be a fusionist? National Review editor Frank S. Meyer’s famous template for conservatism has always been saddled with an unwieldy name, inviting confusion with both nuclear physics and culinary innovation. It is said that the name was coined not by Meyer himself but by his critical interlocutor and one-time NR colleague L. Brent Bozell Jr., who likely meant to imply that Meyer’s brainchild was less than it appeared to be: not an elegant synthesis, like the Scholasticism the more traditionalist Bozell favored, but an awkward middle-school science project. In this view, freedom and virtue can, perhaps, be forced together with rubber cement, but the result will be unsightly and not terribly useful.

Many have come to see fusionism this way in recent years, as populists demand a politics less accommodating of the fusionist coalition’s libertarian faction, or speculate that fusionism’s heyday has simply passed. Of course, fusionism has also had numerous defenders over the decades. But when proponents recommend it as a potentially promising template for conservative renewal today, skeptics snicker, in the way that one might laugh at a middle-aged man’s plea to get the old band back together.

About the Author

Rachel Lu

Rachel Lu is an associate editor of Law & Liberty and a contributing writer at America magazine.

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Who wants to be a fusionist? National Review editor Frank S. Meyer’s famous template for conservatism has always been saddled with an unwieldy name, inviting confusion with both nuclear physics and culinary innovation. It is said that the name was coined not by Meyer himself but by his critical interlocutor and one-time NR colleague L. Brent Bozell Jr., who likely meant to imply that Meyer’s brainchild was less than it appeared to be: not an elegant synthesis, like the Scholasticism the more traditionalist Bozell favored, but an awkward middle-school science project. In this view, freedom and virtue can, perhaps, be forced together with rubber cement, but the result will be unsightly and not terribly useful.

Many have come to see fusionism this way in recent years, as populists demand a politics less accommodating of the fusionist coalition’s libertarian faction, or speculate that fusionism’s heyday has simply passed. Of course, fusionism has also had numerous defenders over the decades. But when proponents recommend it as a potentially promising template for conservative renewal today, skeptics snicker, in the way that one might laugh at a middle-aged man’s plea to get the old band back together.