For decades, many classical liberals have sought to effect a political coalition with American conservatives. In some cases, this alliance seems to have produced positive results. An oft-cited example, the Reagan presidency, was long on rhetoric but less substantial in terms of results.
The most important advocate of this “fusion” coalition was Frank Meyer (Stephanie Slade has written some important background on the fusion movement). Meyer’s version of fusion rests on the notion that American-style conservatism entails both liberty and virtue; neither can be sacrificed without changing the very nature of the thing. Arguments for trading off liberty and virtue contradict the ideals of the American founding. On the other hand, virtue is the more essential value; liberty is the means by which virtue is achieved and secured. Liberty cannot be an end in itself, but virtue cannot be achieved by any means other than the granting of liberty to free and responsible citizens.
The problem is that the two groups are attracted by different elements of fusion’s appeal. Conservatives are more likely to hold to some notion of virtue, based on cultural tradition, the application of right reason, or revelation of the sacred. If virtue requires coercion, then liberty is being sacrificed for the common good.
Libertarians, by contrast, hold that virtue can only be defined for the individual by the individual him or her self. Values start with my own beliefs, and your beliefs, and if we disagree then each of us must be allowed our autonomy, our own “pursuit of happiness.”
Bad Chemistry: It’s Not Me, It’s You
It appears, regardless of the merit of the coalition in the past, that classical liberals are being kicked out, sent into the political wilderness in a kind of diaspora that leaves us homeless. To be sure, there are many on the conservative side who say, “and good riddance!” to the breakup, but I think that is a mistake.
Liberalism and conservatism are indispensable elements of American society, to be sure. But they are in their pure forms quite unstable, even reactive. In chemical terms, it’s as if sodium and chloride (you’ll recognize “salt,” of course), together extremely stable in their bonded molecular form were forced apart. Sodium and chloride are each unstable, and highly reactive as elements. In fact, they are dangerous to the touch, or to inhale.
I believe classical liberalism and American conservatism have a similar problem. Consider each of them separately:
- Libertarianism, in pure form, can devolve into the simplistic claim that all restrictions on liberty are illegitimate. Libertarians thus carry a large negative charge, simply being against everything. As the old story goes, the conservative chides the libertarian: “If you people were in charge, you’d allow the use of heroin openly, in public parks.” The libertarian angrily interrupts: “Not so fast, there, Scooter! What’s this about ‘public’ parks?” If the only goal is the absence of all restraint or moral guidelines, the libertarian can become a free radical, joining with anarchism or hedonism, spinning off into self-destruction.
- Conservatism has the advantage that in its elemental form is “for” things, but those things can become performative fetishes, amulets that symbolize but do not embody the deeper meanings that once made the symbols important. Good people attend church; good people do not desecrate the American flag. But those things are only true if they are done voluntarily. If these symbolic commitments are allowed too much purchase, and liberty is suspended as a value, conservatism can bond with populism, even blood and soil nationalism. This is not patriotism—the insistence that my country actually lives up to its ideals, and being proud when it does. Performative fetishes of conservatism become naïve nationalism, a belief in the intrinsic superiority of race/culture: This is my race, my culture, and none of yours. Go home.
Fusion, then, is a molecule, comprising the elements libertarianism and conservatism. Where the pure atomic elements are unstable and reactive, the molecular bonds of fusionism are stable. The powerful negative charges in libertarianism attract the positive charges of conservatism, each limiting and constraining the other.
The intellectual force behind what is now called fusionism is actually a very old, and therefore in some ways profoundly conservative, idea. It was clearly summarized by the Baron de Montesquieu, a liberal thinker who was greatly influential on the American founders.
“It is true that, in democracies, the people seem to act as they please; but political liberty does not consist in an unlimited freedom. In governments, that is, in societies directed by laws, liberty can consist only in the power of doing what we ought to will, and in not being constrained to do what we ought not to will.” (Spirit of the Laws, Book 11, chap. 3, emphasis added)
Frank Meyer thought of liberty and conservatism in the US as being inseparable, and mutually supporting, for just the reasons that Montesquieu gives.
For me, the most persuasive argument for fusionism is an argument from religious practice. Faith, to be salvatory, must be authentic. Being compelled to do good works, whether it is attending the church or saluting the flag, robs those acts of their voluntary, and therefore salvatory, character. The goal is virtue, but virtue requires liberty. Virtue can exist only in choosing to do what we ought to will, which of course entails the presumption that it is possible to do what we ought not to will. We shouldn’t do that, but we can.
It seems to me that the elements of the conservative/libertarian fusion are in danger of having their strong bonds sundered, on the following question. It is exactly the question on which Patrick Deneen, Josh Hammer, and other critics of liberalism have most focused. The statement is this:
Anything that is legal is not immoral.
Each of the two elements of the fusion molecule have a problem with this statement. Libertarians generally believe that the set of actions that can be obliged, or prohibited, by force, should be sharply limited. There are many actions of which I disapprove that nonetheless I am obliged to allow, under the law. For example, one might believe abortion is wrong, and yet be unwilling to use violence to force others who disagree to accept my moral intuition.
Conservatives, on the other hand, tend to believe that anything one doesn’t like should be illegal. (To be fair, leftists do this, too, but they are a whole different element!)
As a result, libertarians have devoted enormous effort to blocking attempts to legislate morality, while conservatives have violated their essential “small government” commitments precisely so that morality can be legislated.
For fusion to survive, libertarians will be obliged to moderate their powerful negative reactions to any attempt to impose even social or cultural sanctions on behavior. To foreclose state action, it must be possible for cultural sanctions of shaming and disapprobation to be imposed.
Conservatives, for their part, are going to have to accept that cultural and social sanctions are the only tools allowed. If the government is empowered to “legislate morality,” there is no reason to expect that it will be your morality that is dominant. In fact, the nightmare scenario is the one that Montesquieu lays out: the justification for liberty is partly to do what we ought to will, but also to avoid being prevented from doing what we ought to will. Religious freedom for others protects religious freedom for me. The very right others have to be free from arrest for defiling the flag protects my right to revere it.
I worry that “my” side, libertarian economists and the Public Choice movement, have been lazy and complacent. We have acted as if liberty were in fact an end in itself, not a means to achieve secular and religious salvation. We have stood by while the claim that “anything that is not illegal, must be moral” has been taught and propagated. We have created a space where the cultural institutions that teach our children the content of “what they ought to will” have been mocked, weakened, and in some cases destroyed.
None of that changes the value, or the strength, of the core of American culture, the molecular bond between the potentially radical elements libertarianism and conservatism. The problem is that this molecule is being torn apart. If that happens, we’ll all rue the heat of the ensuing reaction.
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