Fusionism
political construct to align conservative and libertarian views
In American politics, fusionism is the philosophical and political combination or "fusion" of traditionalist and social conservatism with political and economic right-libertarianism. Fusionism combines "free markets, social conservatism, and a hawkish foreign policy". The philosophy is most closely associated with Frank Meyer.
Intellectual founding and positions
The philosophy of "fusionism" was developed at National Review magazine during the 1950s under the editorship of William F. Buckley Jr. and is most identified with his associate editor Frank Meyer. As Buckley recounted the founding, he "brokered" between "an extraordinary mix" of libertarians, traditional conservatives and anti-communists to produce the ideas and writings that composed modern conservatism. He identified Meyer's synthesis as the most likely best solution of defining conservatism.
In 1960, a fusionist statement of principles, the Sharon Statement, was adopted at the inaugural meeting of the Young Americans for Freedom at Buckley's childhood home.
In his most influential book, the 1962 In Defense of Freedom, Meyer defined freedom in what Isaiah Berlin would label "negative" terms as the minimization of the use of coercion by the state in its essential role of preventing one person's freedom from intruding upon another's. The state should protect freedom but otherwise leave virtue to individuals.
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This entry incorporates text from “Fusionism” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.