The once dominant and implicitly ecumenical philosophy of fusionism has been denounced by a chorus of right-wing critics as a "dead consensus." Fusionism, some critics assert, was perhaps a necessary contrivance during the Cold War but is now irrelevant. And so a determined quest for yet another formulation of conservatism has begun. The Fall of [...]
Russell Kirk’s prescription of having no major alliances between conservatives and libertarians is wise. Conservatives may stand with libertarians against tyranny and for sensible free market policies, but in the end, I think even accepting the term libertarian is unwise. Should you be a libertarian? The answer, as with every term, depends on how you [...]
In our new social paradigm, moral confusion abounds. Two popular ideologies—Marxism and Libertarianism—attempt to address this confusion. However, neither accounts for the fundamentally social nature of the human person: the way shared values conceive culture and art, how the primacy of belief binds communities together, or that we are born knowing we were created to [...]
The divide between conservatism’s old elements may represent the “end” of the fusionism that built the “conservative movement” and, after a half-century, of the dominance of this thinking within one of America’s major political parties. The intellectual battle between the factions claiming the brand “conservatism” has become “the fight over, well, everything” perceives even outsider [...]
The West has been undone by consumerism, the Sexual Revolution, outsourcing, urbanization, and centralization—all defended by modern conservatives as “the price we must pay” to live in a free and prosperous country. They’re wrong. As Russell Kirk argued, the principal function of government is not to ensure the material security and comfort of its citizenry. [...]
The libertarian theory of constitutional law is clever and undoubtedly well-intentioned, but it is unsound from an originalist standpoint. It is historically untenable. It requires doctrinal leaps of Olympic caliber. Instead of increasing individual liberty, it would destroy the republican form of government by concentrating power in one branch of government. Debates regarding the role [...]
Many Americans fear the dysfunction in Congress and the rise of an “activist” Supreme Court. Both worries are misplaced, at least in relationship to the larger problem at hand: the growth of presidential imperialism. Albert Jay Nock was an important literary and social critic of the first-half of the twentieth century. Part scholar, part pundit, [...]
Frank Meyer was a man looking desperately for faults in the philosophy to which he was most attracted: traditionalism. Finding none, he simply made up another philosophy: fusionism. But instead of coopting the energy and scientific rigor of libertarianism for the traditionalist cause, he simply empowered the former at the latter’s expense… American conservatism originates [...]
When I finished The Conservative Mind for the first time, I remember thinking quite clearly that Russell Kirk had gotten so close to truth, but, then, just when he had the chance, he failed to promote freedom—the proper answer to every single thing. I often look at, hold, and peruse my first (first to me, [...]
Albert Jay Nock believed that the Jeffersonian project depended on the improvability of citizens through education, but that the ordinary mass of humans simply could not be so improved. In Zen Buddhism, the lineage of student to master is extremely important—it is the channel through which the Dharma is transmitted. There is a story of [...]
When the forces of American progressivism emerged in the 1880s and 1890s, those who would one day be labeled as conservatives, classical liberals, and libertarians found themselves quite ill-prepared for the intellectual and political onslaught. Perhaps the best analyst at the time progressivism emerged, somewhat surprisingly, was E.L. Godkin, the venerable founder of The Nation. [...]
One of our slogans is libertarian means for non-libertarian ends. That one works especially well in education. A big danger to the moral and intellectual diversity that graces our country’s mixture of public and private education—especially higher education—is increasingly intrusive bureaucratic government and quasi-governmental entities, such as accrediting agencies. In this category of homogenizing intruders [...]
Since the 2012 election, a wide-ranging and helpful debate about the direction of conservatism has broken out among conservative commentators seeking to re-brand the movement. Key in this debate is how far conservatism should transform itself into libertarianism. Ben Domenech championed what he calls “populist libertarianism,” echoing Peter Suderman’s generous appraisal of what libertarianism can offer. [...]
I appreciate John McGinnis’s account of the state of our liberty. He’s right that by some objective measures liberty is on the decline. But, a consistent individualist might say, liberty is on the march when it comes to same-sex marriage, legalized marijuana, and the general front of “lifestyle liberty.” On this front, as the consistent [...]