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The Conservative Consensus: Frank Meyer, Barry Goldwater, and the Politics of Fusionism Lee Edwards, Ph.D

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The Conservative Consensus: Frank Meyer, Barry Goldwater, and the Politics of Fusionism Lee Edwards, Ph.D No. 8 The Conservative Consensus: Frank Meyer, Barry Goldwater, and the Politics of Fusionism Lee Edwards, Ph.D. onservatives have always been a disputatious lot. Rand did not immediately retaliate but later CTheir disputes are passionate and often personal declared that National Review was “the worst and most precisely because they revolve around the most impor- dangerous magazine in America.” Its mixture of capi- tant thing in politics—ideas. Far from being signs of a talism and religion, she said imperiously, sullied the crackup or a breakdown, intense uninhibited debate rational with the mystical. among conservatives is an unmistakable sign of intel- One of the fiercest rhetorical battles in the early days lectual vigor in a national movement whose influence of the conservative movement was waged between and longevity continue to surprise many in the politi- Frank Meyer, a young communist turned radical lib- cal and academic worlds. ertarian, and Russell Kirk, a deeply rooted traditional- The dispute between traditionalists and libertar- ist. Meyer was not impressed with Kirk’s seminal work, ians has been among the fiercest and most protracted The Conservative Mind, saying that Kirk and like-mind- in American conservatism. Like the generational con- ed conservatives had no grounding in any “clear and flicts of the Hatfields and the McCoys, the philosophi- distinct principle.” Indeed, Meyer charged, Kirk did not cal feuding between these two branches of conserva- comprehend the ideas and institutions of a free society. tism has been going on for some 50 years. Kirk retorted that “individualism” (the term then When Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged became used for libertarianism) was “social atomism” and a best-seller in the late 1950s and began attracting even anti-Christian. The political result of individu- young conservatives, Whittaker Chambers respond- alism, he said, was inevitably anarchy. Custom, tradi- ed with perhaps the most famous and scathing book tion, and the wisdom of our ancestors, Kirk declared, review in the history of National Review. The novel’s constituted the firm foundation upon which a society plot, Chambers wrote, was “preposterous,” its charac- should be built. “A vast gulf,” stated the conservative terization “primitive,” its overall effect “sophomoric.” historian George H. Nash, lay between Meyer’s appeal For all her opposition to the State, he said, Rand really to universal truths like “the freedom of the individual” wanted a society controlled by a “technocratic elite.” and Kirk’s critique of such “abstractions” in the name Arrogant, dogmatic, and intolerant of any opposi- of history and concrete circumstances. tion to its Message, Chambers argued, a voice could The debate was joined by the free-market economist be heard on almost every page of the novel, “To a gas (and future Nobel laureate) F. A. Hayek. Responding chamber—go!” to Kirk’s charge that he and other “modern liberals” 2 No. 8 were guilty of superficial and false assumptions about inviting traditionalists, libertarians, and anti-commu- the nature of man, Hayek wrote an essay trenchantly nists to join the magazine and debate the great issues of titled “Why I Am Not a Conservative.” The trouble the day. But the more they wrote and argued, the more with conservatism, Hayek wrote, is practically every- it seemed that the differences between the branches of thing. It distrusts the new, uses “the powers of gov- conservatism were not peripheral but fundamental. ernment to prevent change,” and does not understand economic forces. Since the conservative is “essentially BRIDGING THE GAP: FRANK S. MEYER opportunist” and lacks political principles, his main One conservative, however, became convinced that hope with regard to government is that “the wise and beneath the conflicting positions and heated rhetoric the good will rule” by authority given to them and lay a consensus of opinion and principle. Frank Meyer, enforced by them. who had accentuated the gulf between traditionalists Furthermore, said Hayek, an acknowledged agnos- and libertarians a few years before, now dedicated tic, the conservative recognizes “no limit” to the use of himself to reconciling the differences that, George coercion in the furtherance of moral and religious ideals. Nash wrote, “threatened to sunder the conservative And he is prone to a “strident nationalism” which can movement.” provide a bridge from conservatism to collectivism. As a staunch individualist, Meyer had argued that Hayek doubted whether “there can be such a thing “freedom of the person” was the primary end of political as a conservative political philosophy.” Conservatism, action. The State had only three strictly limited func- he concluded, may be a useful political maxim, but it tions: national defense, the preservation of domestic does not give us “any guiding principles which can order, and the administration of justice between indi- influence long-range developments.” Hayek wrote viduals. The achievement of virtue, Meyer insisted, those dismissive words in 1960. was not the State’s business; individuals should be left Conservatives openly conceded their intellectual alone to work out their own salvation. disarray. “The conservative movement in America But Meyer, who had been an extremely effective has got to put its theoretical house in order,” William organizer for the Communist Party in his youth, was F. Buckley Jr. wrote in frustration. Erik von Kuehnelt- a political realist as well as political philosopher who Leddihn, a conservative European and frequent con- understood that the conservative movement needed tributor to National Review, lamented that the move- both traditionalists and individualists or libertarians ment had no coherent “ideology.” to be politically successful. While there were points of agreement between In his important 1962 book, In Defense of Freedom, traditionalists and libertarians—a belief in the free Meyer writes that “the Christian understanding of the market, dismay at the increasing size of the govern- nature and destiny of man” is what conservatives are mental colossus, concern about the Soviet Union’s bel- trying to preserve. Both traditionalists and individu- ligerent foreign policy—there were as many areas of alists should therefore acknowledge the true heritage dissent. What was the proper balance between liberty of the West: “reason operating within tradition.” This and order? What was the appropriate response to the theory was later dubbed “fusionism,” which Meyer threat of communism? Could devout Christians and said was based on the conservative consensus already secular economists find common ground on the role forged by the Founders at the 1787 Constitutional Con- of morality in the polity? What did libertarians and vention in Philadelphia. traditionalists really have in common? M. Stanton Evans, who as a young conservative Buckley had sought to patch over the philosophical worked closely with Frank Meyer and is himself a divisions when he founded National Review in 1955 by “fusionist,” has pointed out that the great problem con- No. 8 3 fronting the Founders in Philadelphia was to set up a unanimously value “the human person” as the system of government that provided both order and center of political and social thought. freedom. The challenge was to diffuse and balance • They oppose liberal attempts to use the State “to governmental power so that “each source of authority enforce ideological patterns on human beings.” would limit and restrain the others” while having suf- • They reject the centralized power and direction ficient strength to perform the tasks appropriate to it. necessary to the “planning” of society. In fact, Evans says, neither the “authoritarian” ideas • They join in defense of the Constitution “as orig- of Hamilton nor the “libertarian” ideas of Jefferson inally conceived.” dominated the Constitutional Convention. It was rather • They are devoted to Western civilization and the “fusionist” ideas of Madison. The father of the Con- acknowledge the need to defend it against the stitution writes in The Federalist that in framing a gov- “messianic” intentions of Communism. ernment which is to be administered by men over men, Meyer points out that the most libertarian of the “the great difficulty lies in this: You must first enable contributors “agree upon the necessity of the mainte- the government to control the governed; and in the next nance of a high moral tone in society” while the most place oblige it to control itself.” The Founders’ answer traditionalist “respect the moral liberty of the individ- was to create a system of checks and balances, admin- ual person and reject the centralizing state.” Therefore, istrative and electoral, that prevented any branch of the despite sharp differences of emphasis, Meyer says, federal government from dominating the other. there does exist among conservatives a “consensus While far from perfect, and whatever its current among divergence” equal to that which united those condition, Evans argues, the U.S. Constitution has who created the Constitution and the Republic. proved that conservatism, beginning from “a pro- However, traditionalists as well as libertarians found mistrust of man and of men panoplied as the quickly attacked Meyer’s reasoned case for fusionism. state, can well serve the ends of freedom.” L. Brent Bozell, a conservative Catholic and brother- Another eloquent fusionist was the German econo- in-law of William F. Buckley Jr., complained that lib- mist Wilhelm Roepke, author
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