As conservatives decide how they should respond to this month’s election results, there’s bound to be plenty of debate between the libertarian and traditional wings of the conservative movement.
Libertarians emphasize freedom and the importance of the individual, while traditionalists emphasize order and the importance of tradition and custom.
Of course, the debate about the relative merits of each emphasis is nothing new. One person who tried to bridge the gap was Frank Meyer. The American Conservatism encyclopedia entry on Meyer offers a succinct take on his concept of “fusionism” (a term he did not create):
Meyer wished to link these two principles of freedom and organic moral order. He argued that this could be done and indeed already had been done by America’s founding fathers. Our country’s founding documents preached that virtue was none of the state’s business. Rather, in the political realm liberty was its ultimate goal. But it was not an end in itself; our founders taught that America’s citizens must use liberty to choose virtue. Yet the government must not impose this virtue by force. For virtue and morality to mean anything, they must be freely chosen; men must have the right to be vicious.
