Fusionism remains a preferable alternative to nationalism and postliberalism, yet it carries its own defects and its political prospects are uncertain.
Fusionism remains a preferable alternative to nationalism and postliberalism, yet it carries its own defects and its political prospects are uncertain. Reason editor Stephanie Slade’s significant new book Fusionism: Liberty, Virtue, and the Future of the American Right puts forward a compelling argument for a revival.
I concur with Slade, Jonathan Adler, and others that fusionism is far superior to both nationalism and postliberalism. Nevertheless, I remain doubtful about its practical viability in contemporary politics. In addition, fusionism exhibits notable theoretical shortcomings. Finally, at least in the near to medium term, an alliance with “abundance liberals” may offer libertarians a more hopeful path than a revival of fusionism.
Even with my reservations about revival, I readily recognize fusionism’s substantial prior accomplishments and its continued edge over various other currents within the conservative right. From the 1970s through the early 2000s, fusionist conservatives and libertarians (often with support from moderate/”neoliberal” Democrats) helped achieve major strides such as deregulating many sectors of the economy, cutting tax burdens, strengthening constitutional guarantees for private property and severe limits on federal power, and contributing to the West’s Cold War victory. Although early fusionists sometimes downplayed the Civil Rights Movement and tolerated racism, over time most embraced color-blind principles and the rejection of racial and ethnic discrimination in government policy. They eventually, for a long period, helped make color-blindness the dominant stance on these issues within the conservative movement. William F. Buckley and other fusionists also worked to purge the right of its longstanding anti-Semitic tendencies. Taken together, these are not trivial achievements.
The Rise of Right-Wing Nationalism and Postliberalism
Yet, especially in the last decade, fusionism has been displaced by nationalism as the ruling ideology of the Republican Party and the broader conservative movement. Where fusionism aimed to harmonize tradition with liberty, nationalism poses a grave threat to liberty across a broad spectrum of questions. Consider Donald Trump’s decision to impose steep tariffs, the federal takeover of numerous private firms, efforts to manipulate the FCC and other agencies to blunt free expression, and a policy agenda of mass deportations that jeopardizes both the civil liberties and the economic future of native-born citizens and immigrants alike.
Instead of color-blind nondiscrimination, the contemporary conservative movement has grown more permeated by racial and ethnic prejudice and anti-Semitism that fusionists once sought to root out. Prominent right-wing voices even argue for barring Indian immigrants on the grounds that they work too hard and threaten “homogeneity” and a maintained white majority. Numerous Republican lawmakers advocate religious discrimination in immigration and other policy arenas. In foreign affairs, Trump has damaged ties with liberal democracies such as Canada, Australia, and the European Union, while leaning toward illiberal nationalist authoritarians like Vladimir Putin.
Trump’s idiosyncratic personal biases feed some of these trends, but most stem from the inherent dynamics of nationalism, which tends toward a zero-sum worldview that expands state power over the economy, suppresses minority rights, erodes civil liberties, and veers toward authoritarian governance.
The “postliberalism” championed by many leading right-wing intellectuals and activists is equally troubling. Postliberals like Adrian Vermeule and Patrick Deneen openly advocate a dramatic expansion of state power over the economy and civil society, and the curtailment of both economic and personal freedoms. Unlike nationalism, postliberalism lacks broad popular support, but it wields considerable influence among the intellectuals and activists who could staff future Republican administrations and congressional offices.
Illiberal big-government nationalism has a strong hold on the Republican base. The 2024 election vividly illustrated this. In the GOP presidential contest, Trump faced Nikki Haley (a notable proponent of traditional fusionism) and Ron DeSantis (a popular governor who tried to straddle MAGA nationalism and pre-2016 conservatism). Yet, despite the January 6 insurrection and numerous scandals, Trump not only defeated these rivals but did so with ease. While part of his appeal stemmed from a distinctive personal magnetism, it also underscored the extent to which illiberal nationalism has influenced the GOP. Even now, as Trump’s popularity wanes, most congressional Republicans hesitate to oppose his most damaging policies for fear of losing in MAGA-dominated primaries. Those who do challenge him on major issues have often been defeated in primaries (e.g., Rep. Thomas Massie) or chose not to run again because of the likelihood of that fate (e.g., Rep. Don Bacon).
As the 2026 midterm landscape looks challenging, a minority of Republicans have started to vocally criticize certain policies, such as the mismanaged Iran War, but very few have repudiated big-government nationalism or urged a return to fusionism.
Perhaps a shift will occur once Trump exits the scene. But that is not something to count on. The leading contenders for the 2028 GOP presidential nomination—Vice President J.D. Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio—appear to be jockeying to inherit Trump’s more problematic traits rather than to oppose them.
Inherent Limitations of Fusionism
Even if fusionists regain control of the Republican Party and the conservative movement, the ideology’s internal constraints could sap its usefulness. The degree to which fusionism can accommodate robust protections for both economic and personal liberty remains unclear. Frank Meyer, a principal architect of fusionism in the 1950s and 1960s, famously argued that liberty and virtue reinforce one another because liberty enables people to be genuinely virtuous. A person who merely refrains from wrongdoing because the state compels him isn’t truly virtuous at all. Consider the example of a man who abstains from violence and theft solely for fear of imprisonment; he is not a paragon of virtue.
That claim has real merit. Yet most social conservatives, including many who sympathize with fusionism, do not fully embrace it—or anything close. They contend that in many cases we want virtuous behavior regardless of the underlying motive. Or at least that acting rightly for a bad reason is far better than not acting rightly at all. Hence, if you believe that pornography, prostitution, gambling, drug use, and similar activities are inherently immoral, you may advocate using state power to suppress these activities—even if people who abstain only because they fear punishment are not as virtuous as those who avoid them voluntarily.
Indeed, many conservative fusionists regard a broad range of consensual activities as morally wrong, or insist that paternalism requires restricting them. As a result, a substantial portion of fusionist conservatism has endorsed policies that sharply curtail liberty. Ronald Reagan—the president who most vividly embodied fusionist ideals—expanded the War on Drugs, a federal policy that curtails liberty by jailing or imprisoning hundreds of thousands of people simply for their use, possession, or distribution of substances deemed risky by the government. Reagan’s drug policy was not as extreme as Trump’s international killings of suspected drug dealers, but it was exceedingly harmful and a stark demonstration of fusionism’s limits.
Otherwise, I have argued that today libertarians’ best potential partners are “abundance liberals.” They are far from perfect, but they share with us substantial common ground on issues such as trade, immigration, nuclear energy, and permissive housing deregulation (the “YIMBY” agenda), among others. Like us, they tend to oppose both left- and right-wing ethnic identity politics (for examples of this trend, see recent pieces by Matt Yglesias and Kelsey Piper). Overall, they exercise considerably more influence within the Democratic Party and the broader left than fusionists enjoy within the Republican Party and the conservative movement today.
The left, of course, has its own dangerous illiberal threat in the form of democratic socialists, whose statism bears similarities to MAGA-style nationalism. But this faction does not dominate the Democratic Party or the broader left nearly to the extent that nationalist currents have come to dominate the right.
None of this proves libertarians cannot continue to work with fusionist conservatives on a range of issues. I have collaborated with such conservatives through the Society for the Rule of Law and in opposing Trump’s tariffs (where they played pivotal roles in the litigation that led to the Supreme Court’s rejection of Trump’s IEEPA tariff power grab, and in ongoing efforts to resist his attempts to impose sweeping tariffs by other means). Some fusionists are more favorable to liberty than others, and there is broad variation across issues among them.
And perhaps, in a decade or two, circumstances may look different. The Trumpist moment in right-wing politics may fade, though probably not rapidly.
Productive cooperation between libertarians and (some) conservatives remains entirely feasible. But we should recognize that fusionists are unlikely to regain control of the conservative movement anytime soon, and that fusionism itself harbors notable intrinsic limitations. Therefore, we should seek other allies and avoid placing an outsized share of our bets on the fusionist path. At this point, it cannot safely shoulder a large portion of our strategic bets.
