DREADTALK: John Heard In 'Policy Magazine' On William F. Buckley Jr., 'Fusionism' & 'Virtue Or Freedom'? - Centre For Independent Studies

:: Update ::

DREADNOUGHT gave a paper on the history of - and ideological tensions within, recent U.S. conservative political theory at the Centre For Independent Studies Advanced Liberty & Society Conference in Sydney (October 3 - 5, 2008).

:: Future / Fusionism ::

The paper (published in the Spring 2008 issue of Policy magazine) was introduced during a forty minute session. The session included the following prepared remarks, followed by a thirty minute Q&A session.

:: COMMON GROUND / COMMON GOOD ::

An Introduction to the Paper “Common Sense: The Past and Future of the Libertarian / Conservative Debate” (HTML, .PDF) [1]

John Heard*

To understand American Conservativism, it is important to note first that men like William F. Buckley Junior thought that American prestige; power, social cohesion, and internal prosperity were in grave danger of collapse. Certainly, by the middle decades of last century, many Americans felt that the nation, formerly understood as a community that would flourish by virtue, was under serious threat.

A new understanding, something specifically modern, and a movement many people in America thought “liberal”, if not necessarily “progressive”, now commanded those institutions - religious, domestic, academic, artistic, and political – that represented the most significant inputs into American culture and identity.

It wasn’t just conservatives who were alarmed. Many people looked at America, particularly the political, cultural and social landscape of the mid-Sixties onwards, and discerned a serious decline.

Diverse groups spoke of the nation falling apart. They worried that the schools were “going to hell”. Joan Didion, a former leading light at National Review, described this mood in the preface to her first collection of essays:

I went to San Francisco because I had not been able to work in some months, had been paralyzed by the conviction that writing was an irrelevant act, that the world as I had understood it no longer existed. If I was to work again at all, it would be necessary for me to come to terms with [America’s] disorder.[2]

Conservativism, on the other hand, as Buckley and his colleagues imagined the project of fusionism, was about emphatically not coming to terms with disorder. Didion became something of a liberal, but Buckley and his colleagues discerned an historical shift. America was moving away from what Buckley called Truth, and towards what conservatives quickly identified as relativism.

In their somewhat idiosyncratic mix of concerns, we can discern the enduring themes of the conservatives’ complaint. Buckley didn’t invent the culture wars, of course, but when he broke through to national fame with his first book, God And Man At Yale, and founded the magazine National Review, he quite deliberately fought back against liberal cultural dominance.

We know that he did so by bringing two bright streams of political thought – libertarianism, and conservativism – together, and we know that this unlikely movement was called fusionism.

What I haven’t set out in my paper, and what perhaps deserves clearly stating, is that Buckley and the conservatives he groomed were subtle men.

They could see, immediately, that progressive technologies and tools – things like liberal faculties at universities, and the liberal consensus in academic journals - came about because of careful progressive planning. Unlike the thinkers who went before them, fusionists understood right away how otherwise wonkish ideas take on a political life of their own. They knew that brilliant practical ideas are given practical purchase on government, and ultimately nourished, by overarching claims in philosophical, economic, political, and other theoretical discourses.

In this way, American conservatives saw practical tools, such as legislation, and some taxes, as integral to their critique of liberal ideology, and many previously uncontroversial, progressive solutions came in for sustained attack. Buckley began to argue that the rules that bind US citizens coerced them, in many cases, into a kind of economic and amoral collectivity. This was a form of control inconsistent with the ideal of the more vibrant (more free, more virtuous) society that the fusionists wanted to build.

Their solution was, in many cases, to unwind the liberal system: ideas, tools, and laws - the lot.

Fusionists argued among themselves,[3] of course, but by adhering to a remarkably sensible sort of pragmatism, they used any internal tensions to their advantage.

Buckley’s National Review certainly helped create an ideas-factory, one with an in-built competition system.

So, when US conservatives advocated the so-called small government solution, an argument that now characterizes the system, the solution was both libertarian - it called for more freedom - and conservative, appealing to the traditional virtues of self-reliance, fortitude, and prudence.

Further, only the best ideas, regardless of ideological stripe, would see the light of day, and the best ideas, fusionists agreed, were always those that offered voters the freedom to choose virtue.

This system has allowed US conservatives to come up with politically attractive, and eminently practical solutions to problems as diverse as excellence in education (school vouchers), the desirability of financial regulation (mostly, considered undesirable), and the morality of healthcare (where it is understood that there is a need to ensure people are protected from major hardship, but little faith in a socialized healthcare system).

With very little tweaking, indeed, the same system can also produce otherwise surprising, even ostensibly contradictory ideas, helping conservatives to take stock of the past, and come to grips with mistakes.

In the past week, for instance, many anti-regulation capitalists became so-called “middle-class capitalists”,[4] and voted for the $700 billion Wall Street package. In these sorts of moves, conservative commentators such as David Brooks discern an evolution towards what has been called “Sam’s Club Republicanism”,[5] which is another variation on the fusionist model.

Just when American conservativism seemed to have failed, then, and fusionism might have been looking wan,[6] new ideas, new movements, and – please note, new buzzwords and labels - suggest ways the movement might press ahead.[7]

Conservatives have always operated in this way, as though good ideas can collapse old orders – even correct conservative failures - and they have long believed that the resulting breakdown of any liberal, or otherwise flawed political consensus, presents new opportunities.

Buckley, certainly committed conservatives to the notion that behind all political forces:

…there are moral and philosophical concepts, implicit or defined. [America’s] political economy and [her] high-energy industry run on large, general principles, on ideas – not by day-to-day guess work, expedients and improvisations. Ideas have to go into exchange to become or remain operative…[8]

Such strategic thinking paved the way for the think tanks, campus groups, and other intellectual resources that fed into the conservative loop in America. These continue to produce competitive solutions. Despite the inherent tensions in fusionism and regardless of any ideological impasse, this pragmatism makes conservatives’ policies operative in the marketplace of political ideas.

That conservatives were, as Buckley claimed, free to try new ideas, and willing to consider new tools of governance, made them “just about the hottest thing in town”.[9]

They were, by turns libertarians, usually on economic or market-related issues, and also more properly traditionalists, concerned to see the nation’s institutions strengthened, her families cohesive, her virtues proven once more, American conservatives drew together strands as disparate as “the rich pages of Adam Smith’s economics and the deep prose of Edmund Burke’s traditionalism”.[10]

Some of the people in this room will be sympathetic with this project, and those who aren’t will be opposed for – I trust – interesting reasons.

For this session, however, I’d like to suggest that three inter-related questions, (signal concerns of the early fusionist movement) are key concerns for anyone interested in the tensions thrown up by freedom, flourishing, and political realities:

What is the proper relationship between freedom and virtue? Has contemporary (conservative) politics / society got the mix wrong?

To what extent are the pressures behind fusionism still relevant today? How does a fusionist challenge, interrogate, or otherwise destabilize an idea or tool of ostensible freedom that seems, rather, to be anything but liberating?

[and]

(Perhaps taking in your ideas on the current Presidential election) Is there a future for fusionism in America? In Australia?

:: Notes ::

[1] Policy Magazine (Spring, 2008).
* B.A. (Hons), LL.B (Hons) Melbourne; presented at the Centre For Independent Studies 2008 Advanced Liberty & Society Conference (Sydney), October 3 - 5.
[2] Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem (New York, Farrar Straus and Giroux, 1968), Pp. xi - xii.
[3] Lee Edwards, “The Conservative Consensus: Frank Meyer, Barry Goldwater, And The Politics Of Fusionism” in First Principles Series (22 January, 2007), Available online at: http://www.heritage.org/Research/NationalSecurity/fp8.cfm.
[4] David Brooks, “Middle-Class Capitalists” in New York Times (11 January, 2008), Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/11/opinion/11brooks.html?pagewanted=print.
[5] David Brooks, “The Sam’s Club Agenda” in New York Times (27 June, 2008), Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/27/opinion/27brooks.html?pagewanted=print.
[6] W. James Antle III, “Conservative Crack-Up: Will Libertarians Leave The Cold War Coalition?” in American Conservative Magazine (17 November, 2003), Available online at: http://www.amconmag.com/print.html?Id=AmConservative-2003nov17-00008; Daniel McCarthy, “The Failure Of Fusionism” in American Conservative Magazine (29 January, 2007), Available at: http://www.amconmag.com/print.html?Id=AmConservative-2007jan29-00019; Robert Tracinski, “The End Of Republican ‘Fusionism’?” in Real Clear Politics (1 March, 2008), Available at: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/03/the_end_of_republican_fusionis.html.
[7] C.f. Ross Douthat And Reihan Salam, Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win The Working Class And Save The American Dream (Various Publishers, 2008).
[8] William F. Buckley Jr., “Our Mission Statement” in National Review (19 November, 1955), Available at: http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NDJhYTJjNWI0MWFiODBhMDc2MzQwY2JlM2RhZjk5ZjM=.
[9] William F. Buckley Jr., “Our Mission Statement” in National Review (19 November, 1955), Available at: http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NDJhYTJjNWI0MWFiODBhMDc2MzQwY2JlM2RhZjk5ZjM=.
[10] Joseph Bottum, “The New Fusionism” in First Things (June / July, 2005), Available at: http://www.firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=211.

:: The Debate ::

I fielded questions on topics as diverse as the current financial / economic meltdown (What went wrong? How can conservatives present / represent first principles, and account for market / moral failures?); the nature (and current vigour) of social conservativism in the U.S. and Australia; the future of "fusionism"; Augustan (Roman) legal / political history (on how / if the leges Iuliae provided a model of social conservative / virtue legislation); and whether or not a man like Warren Buffet might be called the "most virtuous man in America"?

:: The Upshot ::

DREADNOUGHT is grateful to the Centre For Independent Studies for the opportunity to present, and defend my paper. I am also grateful for the advice and feedback of the conference organisers, and I was delighted by the energetic participation of the attendees.