Fusionism, as we will use the term in this blog, denotes a philosophical reconciliation between conservative and libertarian principles. The concept (often attributed to the late National Review contributor Frank Meyer) goes beyond the mere strategic alliance between these two factions for reasons of political expediency and instead seeks a coherent blending of the two ideologies.
For many reasons that we hope will become apparent over the life of this blog, we am not only proponents of Fusionsim, but we think it is essential to the future health and success of the Republican Party in the United States. For virtually my whole politically conscious life, American political pundits of all ideological stripes have speculated about, feared and/or celebrated the break up of the Republican Party on the theory that one or the other of these two constituencies (libertarian or conservative) would break away from the GOP. Our thesis (and the point of this blog) is that this crack up has not happened because the bond between the libertarian and conservative wings of the GOP is more resilient than is supposed.
It is often postulated the the conservative-libertarian alliance is predicated solely on matters in the "economic sphere," and that in areas broadly classified as "social issues" the two wings of the GOP are at loggerheads and simply agree to disagree, putting the economic agenda first. With that reading of the political landscape, no wonder liberals of all stripes predict (and hope for) an inevitably splintering of the GOP base along the "social issues" fault line. The reason libertarians and traditionalist conservatives have made common cause since Barry Goldwater, however, is that this conventional wisdom is not correct. While traditionalist conservatives and libertarians often disagree on the merits of many "social issues" what they do (often, but not always) agree on is this: the State has no legitimate role to play in deciding hot-button, culture-war issues. In a free society, social mores should not be determined by the state, but by the organic, voluntary associations and institutions of civil society. What both libertarians and conservatives decry--often for very different reasons--is the crumbling of a civil society that, for conservatives, once offered moral authority to traditional values, and, for libertarians, once served as an important bulwark against state over-reach.
Now, this is not true on every issue, and libertarians often make common cause with liberals on a host of issues (this is complicated further by the fact that the term "libertarian" encompasses a wide swath of viewpoints, but we're speaking here of the Cato-Reason brand of libertarian thought). Some of these issues, where libertarians line up with liberal Democrats, have indeed put enormous strain on the Fusionist Alliance. However, liberals are amazingly tone deaf to this overall dynamic, which is why they are perpetually perplexed by the resiliency of the Fusionist project. This creates an enormous opportunity for GOP politicians, to speak in a language and for a process that both libertarians and conservatives can get behind: smaller government, and an expanded role for civil society.
