Frank Meyer’s fusionism tried to reconcile laissez-faire economics with traditionalist conservatism

Evidence

Shortly before the founding of the National Review Meyer explained his differences with Russell Kirk, arguing in The Freeman that the New Conservatism advocated by Kirk, Peter Viereck, Walter Lippmann, and Clinton Rossiter opposed the concentration of power without identifying “by what standards overconcentration is to be judged.” Meyer believed that in the absence of fi rm guidelines, the New Conservatives had become too skeptical of individualism and too accommodationist in regard to the New Deal. … His goal was to formulate a social environment that preserved the capacity of the individual to choose between “virtue” and “vice” while socializing individuals to take what he perceived to be the virtuous path. … Invoking a language familiar to readers of Röpke, he referred to his social vision as a “third way” between the “authority of truth” and the “freedom of men.” His contemporaries, however, referred to the project as “fusionism”: an attempt to develop a social philosophy that could inspire the allegiance of both laissezfaire economists and conservatives who emphasized the primacy of “virtue” or historically grounded “truths.” — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, 378

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines ‘fusionism’ as the attempt to synthesize laissez-faire economics with virtue-based traditionalist conservatism within the National Review.
• XREF: Connects to the MPS milieu — Meyer’s ‘third way’ language echoes Röpke, linking American fusionism to continental neo-liberal third-way framing. — connects to: Frank Meyer converted from Communist organizer to conservative after reading Hayek. — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 376; Meyer rejected both traditionalists and market-fundamentalist economists as inadequate guides — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 378