Frank Meyer, the intellectual progenitor of “fusionism,” disliked the term. It was one of those labels — “neoconservatism” is another — invented by an opponent. He did not believe he was putting anything together anew, but rather recovering the “truly Western philosophy of freedom.”

His project was to get libertarians and traditionalists to unite as more than allies of convenience. Each group was right about something: Virtue is the chief end of man, but freedom his chief political end. Each group was wrong only insofar as it denied the truth the other emphasized. Libertarians erred by exalting an individualism without moral foundations, traditionalists by attempting to coerce virtue.

The correct relationship between the two emphases, for Meyer, boiled down to the proposition that “the simulacrum of virtuous acts brought about by the coercion of superior power is not virtue, the meaning of which resides in the free choice of good over evil.” Traditionalists had to come to understand that liberty is a precondition of virtue, libertarians that liberty is valuable for that reason.

Fissionists attacked this thesis from both directions in the early 1960s. Brent Bozell, for the moralists, held that free will is a universal fact and not a political goal at all: Even under Soviet oppression, men always had the option of conforming their will to the good. On Meyer’s logic, Bozell wrote, virtue should be made as difficult as possible to achieve so as to make it more virtuous.

Russell Kirk, another traditionalist, was not enthusiastic about even allying with libertarians. Kirk scorned these “chirping sectaries” for their godlessness, their utilitarianism, and their confidence in the perfectibility of man. Kirk’s brush was too broad, but in his defense, some libertarians have taken these beliefs to be essential to their philosophy. And while Meyer was more irenically disposed toward libertarians, his own project assumed that libertarians were prone to such errors. They were the rough edges he sought to persuade them to smooth.

The most influential critique from the libertarians was that of Murray Rothbard. He accepted some of Meyer’s (and Kirk’s) points: He too was a dedicated foe of classical liberals’ utilitarianism, opposing it in the name of natural rights. Rothbard reasoned that Meyer had therefore not landed a blow against libertarianism, per se, at all: that Meyer was, indeed, a “libertarian manqué.” On every point where libertarians and traditionalists differed about what government should do, Rothbard said, Meyer sided with the libertarians.

Meyer and his followers won the political debate. Two months after becoming president, Ronald Reagan testified to Meyer’s impact, saying he had “fashioned a vigorous new synthesis of traditional and libertarian thought — a synthesis that is today recognized by many as modern conservatism.” And while many have doubted whether the fusionist coalition could hang together, its staying power is undeniable. President Trump has probably never heard of Meyer. But his record of opposition to abortion, taxes, and regulation reflects the enduring strength of the coalition of social and economic conservatives that Meyer did so much to bring together.

In the 1980s and 1990s, fusionism inspired many objections from libertarians who were unhappy about the rise of religious conservatism and convinced it was an electoral liability. More recently, especially since the great recession that began a dozen years ago, social conservatives have been complaining that libertarians have too much power, especially over economic policy. It’s their turn to be blamed for electoral setbacks.

Even if fusionism survives this onslaught and remains a strong force in U.S. politics for more decades to come, it will always be subject to centrifugal forces. Its precarity may owe to the fact that, at least as articulated by Meyer, its theoretical justification is weak. Rothbard was literally an anarchist and Bozell came to prefer Franco’s Spain to the U.S., but the anti-fusionist arguments both of them made have never been satisfactorily answered. As a political doctrine fusionism is distinguishable from libertarianism only in greater vagueness, roughly as Rothbard said. Virtuous action does not categorically require the absence of governmental constraint, just as Bozell explained.

Meyer believed that the Constitution was a fusionist achievement avant la lettre, protecting freedom and thus allowing virtue. But the Constitution actually facilitated the pursuit of these goods in a different way. State and local governments had immense power to promote virtue, in ways that would seem quite illiberal today. (Laws against blasphemy were common.) No Founder sought to put direct constitutional limits on that power. Discouraging vice, even through legal sanctions, was not thought to be wrong in principle, whether because it prevented moral excellence or for some other reason. At the same time, the Constitution established a structure for the federal government, its relationship with the states, and their relationships with one another that tended to restrain government power.

Meyer’s erroneous argument about the necessity of freedom for virtue contributed to a theoretical maximalism that has also marked the conservatism he helped form. The argument, combined with Meyer’s general libertarianism, meant that the expansion of government is not only frequently imprudent but nearly always an impediment to man’s achievement of his foremost aim. It was to be resisted as a great spiritual evil. Meyer presented his view that the school-lunch program had “totalitarian implications” as a straightforward application of his philosophy.

The invalidity of Meyer’s central argument for fusionism does not compel conservatives to abandon freedom or virtue. Human flourishing, the end of government, requires both. Markets can unleash creativity, foster voluntary cooperation, and meet human needs. Suppressing them may hinder the development of important virtues. There are many reasons to prefer that government’s touch be kept light and that tasks be accomplished by the humblest social organization that can manage them.

None of these considerations, however, dictates a rigid libertarianism or excludes the possibility that government may in some instances legitimately and rightly act to promote good character and the habits associated with it. (This is why we have marriage laws, for example.) It should exert itself to foster those conditions that enable families and other crucial institutions to thrive, conditions that include but go far beyond police protection for property rights. In that way, it aids the formation of people, and a polity, capable of exercising and respecting freedom.

Governments should do what they, and only they, can to enable us to lead virtuous lives. There is no need to worry they will ever make our jobs too easy.