Why the Right Is Embracing State Power

Reason Senior Editor Stephanie Slade joins Nick Gillespie to discuss the future of the American right after Donald Trump, and whether libertarians will have a place in it.

In Fusionism: Liberty, Virtue, and the Future of the American Right, Slade argues that the political philosophy espoused by National Review co-founder Frank Meyer remains a vibrant synthesis of the liberty prized by libertarians and the virtue that is central to conservatives and traditionalists. Slade and Gillespie discuss the development of fusionism in post-war America, the often-unacknowledged common ground between libertarian thinkers like Friedrich Hayek and conservatives like Russell Kirk, and the rise of “post-liberal” figures such as J.D. Vance and Patrick Deneen, who argue that the state should severely curtail economic and lifestyle freedom. Slade explains why she thinks young people are increasingly finding authoritarian politics appealing and why a true renewal of civil society can only come from voluntary institutions.

0:00—What is fusionism?

2:56—Defining Judeo-Christian virtue

8:12—Can you have limited government without virtue?

11:11—Frank Meyer

19:34—Pluralism and rationalism

22:42—Russell Kirk and Friedrich Hayek

35:58—Brent Bozell Jr.

42:34—Conservatism and Catholicism

46:29—The right’s embrace of state power

54:46—Are we in a period of societal decline?

1:00:48—How fusionism can revive the culture