I

  • History of the strategy
    • Fusionism is a political strategy based upon social traditionalism of the Judeo-Christian world, laze-faire capitalism, and an aggressive foreign policy
    • The idea was formed by Frank Meyer in response to the “Communist Threat” of the Cold War and the rising tide of collectivist liberalism in America
    • Here is a quote of Frank Meyer’s from his 1964 essay “Freedom, Tradition, Conservatism”  that sums up what Fusionism is and where it comes from:
      • “Closely related to the false antithesis between reason and tradition that distorts the dialogue between the libertarian emphasis and the traditionalist emphasis among conservatives is our historical inheritance of the nineteenth-century European struggle between classical liberalism and a conservatism that was too often rigidly authoritarian. Granted there is much in classical liberalism that conservatives must reject–its philosophical foundations, its tendency towards Utopian constructions, its disregard (explicitly, though by no means implicitly) of tradition — and granted it is the source of much that is responsible for the plight of the twentieth century, its championship of freedom and its development of political and economic theories directed towards the assurance of freedom have contributed to our heritage concepts which we need to conserve and develop, as surely as we need to reject the utilitarian ethics and the secular progressivism that classical liberalism has also passed on to us.

Nineteenth-century conservatism, with all its understanding of the preeminence of virtue and value, for all its piety towards the continuing tradition of mankind, was far too cavalier to the claims of freedom, far too ready to subordinate the individual person to the authority of state or society.

The conservative today is the inheritor of the best in both these tragically bifurcated branches of the Western tradition, but the division lingers on and adds to the difficulties of conservative discourse. The traditionalist … tends to reject the political and economic theories of freedom which flow from classical liberalism in his reaction against its unsound metaphysics. He discards the true with the false, creating unnecessary obstacles to the mutual dialogue in which he is engaged with his libertarian alter ego. The libertarian, suffering from the mixed heritage of the nineteenth-century champions of liberty, reacts against the traditionalist’s emphasis upon precedent and continuity out of antipathy to the authoritarianism with which that emphasis has been associated, although in actuality he stands firmly for continuity and tradition against the rising revolutionary wave of collectivism and statism.”

    • As I have stated in past episodes, the modern libertarian movement was largely spawned out of the classic liberal movement of the 18th and 19th centuries.
    • The “fusionism” was an attempt to bring together the ideas of traditionalist American society, which at that time was a society based more upon Christianity than individualism, and the individualistic economics espoused by F. A. Hayek and Ludwig Von Mises
      • One interesting note: Hayek, who considered himself a classic liberal, agreed with Meyer’s general argument for the fusionist strategy; Hayek’s argument was moreso that a society should be based upon some sort of moral backbone rather than simply Christianity
    • Out of the fusionist movement was born the modern conservative movement, effectively killing the “Old Right”
    • The first major push for these ideas came via William Buckley’s National Review magazine
    • The activist side of the movement was the Young Americans for Freedom
  • Frank Meyer’s Communist Roots
    • Frank Meyer, the creator of Fusionism was a staunch communist during the early part of his life
    • He eventually converted to conservatism and became good friends with William Buckley
  • The libertarian wing
    • The libertarian wing of the fusionist movement comes from the idea that lazze –faire capitalism is the most beneficial economic system in a free society.
    • The issue with libertarians working with the religious right and the pro-aggression folks is the religious right will use legislation to restrict libertarian social policy and the pro-aggression people both violate the libertarian non aggression axiom and must have a liberal spending policy to afford war
  • The religious wing
    • The religious wing of the fusionist movement is focused on promoting traditionalism and Judeo-Christian values
    • I pointed out above the major reason the religious wing does not get along with libertarians, but they also sometimes support welfare and other social policies that go against libertarian economic policy.  Oddly enough the majority of the religious wing goes right along with the military wing of the party
  • The foreign aggression wing
    • The foreign aggression wing, or the military wing, of the fusionist movement is focused on defeating global communism, and now global terrorism via military force
  • Obviously enough the wing of this movement that is getting the biggest shaft is the libertarians.  For if we are to be a part of their conservatism, we have to both give up our principals on economics and social liberties to appease the other two wings.  Basically they get to use our rhetoric, bastardize our philosophy and they attract a large number of our activists.
  • As much as I like Ron Paul, I think he is really walking a thin line with trying to make conservatism and libertarianism synonymous.  The real issue with taking over the GOP isn’t anything about trying to work the system, but really it’s about selling out our principals for slight electoral gains that don’t mean much.

II

  • Beginnings of the Republican Party
    • As we are told in public schools, the Republican Party was founded by anti-slavery activists
    • However, what they do not tell you is the majority of the early leadership of the party were in fact former European Communist revolutionaries
    • Some of the early platform planks of the GOP included very progressive ideas like federal funding for railroad construction and improvements to rivers and other water ways .  They also rebuked all ideas of personal sovergnty while at the same time stating that the reason the United States had been successful up to that period was because of the Union, not the people.
    • Slavery was only mentioned a couple of times in the first two platforms of the GOP, in 1856 and 1860, but neither platform actually asked to the abolition of slavery except into new territories.  It was not until the 1864 platform, during the Civil War, that they made a stand against it:
      • 3. Resolved, That as slavery was the cause, and now constitutes the strength of this Rebellion, and as it must be, always and everywhere, hostile to the principles of Republican Government, justice and the National safety demand its utter and complete extirpation from the soil of the Republic; and that, while we uphold and maintain the acts and proclamations by which the Government, in its own defense, has aimed a deathblow at this gigantic evil, we are in favor, furthermore, of such an amendment to the Constitution, to be made by the people in conformity with its provisions, as shall terminate and forever prohibit the existence of Slavery within the limits of the jurisdiction of the United States.
    • The Forty-Eighters, John Fremont, Abraham Lincoln and the Communist GOP
      • The Forty-Eighters were a group of European revolutionaries, lead by wealthy Communists that were involved in the revolutions of 1848 in Europe
        • These men were influenced by Karl Marx’s Manifesto of the Communist Party;
          • The people’s goal was a republic like the United States that would guarantee human rights; the goal of the leaders was a united communist state of the Germanic people, under the guise of a republic, in Germany and the Austrian Empire
          • After the failed revolution, around 10,000 of the forty-eighters came to America and many quickly joined the army and some even became top government officials
          • Some of the founders of the GOP were forty-eighters
          • When the civil war broke out, even more forty-eighters joined the army and fought against the secessionists
    • The forty-eighters supported both John C. Fremont, the first Presidential candidate for the GOP, but also Abraham Lincoln
      • Karl Marx and some other European communists wrote a letter to Lincoln and congratulating him on the successes he was having with the civil war
      • I am not taking sides on the issue of the civil war; I am making this point to show that the GOP’s roots were not what we consider conservative, but rather were made up of American progressives and European Communists
    • The GOP during Reconstruction
      • The Radical Republicans were the staunch abolitionist wing of the Republican Party; after the civil war they demanded that the people of the former Confederacy actually have less rights
      • Lincoln was more of a moderate and blocked much of the legislation that the radicals were trying to push through
      • When Andrew Johnson became President after Lincoln’s assassination, many of the radicals thought he was on their side.  When he proved otherwise, they tried to impeach him

III

  • The End of the Progressive GOP
    • Much of the laws that we fight against today, such as the Income Tax and the Federal Reserve Act, were created by Republicans in the early 20th century
    • The progressive Republicans that were elected during this period were Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft
    • Warren G. Harding was the first president from the GOP to start leaning conservative;  however the first small-government conservative President from the GOP was Calvin Coolidge
    • The last Progressive president from the GOP was Herbert Hoover;
      • His reaction to the Wall Street Crash of 1929 was an interventionist one, which goes against popular belief.  He, along with the Democrat FDR drew out the Great Depression because of their meddling in the marketplace.
    • A Conservative GOP
      • The “Old Right”
        • The old right was a coalition of classic liberals and libertarian types that were against intervention in WWII and FDR’s New Deal
        • It was made up of members of both the GOP and the Democrats, but the majority were Republicans
        • They distinguished themselves from the pre-Fusionist “New Right” Republicans that believed in interventionist policies to defeat communism by calling themselves the Old Right
  • The “New Right”
    • The New Right was formed by libertarians, traditionalists and anti-communists; this group eventually formed the Fusionist movement
    • While not every member of the New Right was an interventionist, a great majority of them were and supported the wars in Korea and Vietnam
    • Barry Goldwater was the first Presidential nominee of this new right coalition; he lost the Presidency but that campaign really solidified fusionism within the conservative community
    • The New Right fought the more Progressive Rockefeller Republicans throughout the 60s and 70s, but eventually they were successful in electing Ronald Reagan as President in 1980 and 1984
  • Since the Presidency of Reagan, the conservative movement has largely fallen apart.  While the GOP was able to elect both George HW Bush and George W Bush, neither of these men were able to capture the energy of the fusionists nor turned their back upon the libertarian wing by raising taxes and spending
  • Some of the fusionists saw hope when the GOP was able to take over Congress in 1994, going along with Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America; most of these promises of lower taxes and spending were kept though.

IV

  • Paleoconservatism and Paleolibertarianism
    • In the late 1980s and into the early 1990s, long time libertarian activists Murray N Rothbard and Lew Rockwell, along with conservative Pat Buchanan joined up together and formed the paleo movement
    • Interestingly enough, the paleo movement was a reaction to both the military wing of the fusionist movement and the liberalism of immigration and social attitudes within the libertarian movement
    • Rothbard and Rockwell eventually became disillusioned with Buchanan as he continued to show support for intervention into the economy.  Rockwell has given up the term paleolibertarian and calls himself simply a libertarian now
    • The most prominent paleolibertarian today is Ron Paul
    • Fusionism today
      • Today fusionism as a movement is troubled
      • Because of the increasing influence of the religious right and the military wing, libertarians are being forced out of the alliance
      • However, there are two movements that are growing out of the New Right coalition that are currently trying to take over the GOP, that is the tea party movement and the Ron Paul Revolution
      • The Ron Paul Revolution
        • The Ron Paul Revolution was born out of Ron Paul’s 2008 bid for the Republican presidential nomination
        • He stood out against all of the other candidates as he took a principled libertarian stand against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the drug war, high taxes, out of control spending  and big government in general
        • After John McCain became the Republican nominee for President, Ron Paul created the Campaign for Liberty and his followers created a strategy called “Taking the GOP back to its Roots”, which again is ironic considering what I stated before about the GOP being founded and run by European communists
        • The RPR has been mildly successful in the political scene; Debra Medina a former Paul supporter was surging in the polls for Texas governor, and Ron Paul’s son Rand Paul is currently the frontrunner for the GOP nomination for a Senate seat in Kentucky and has received an endorsement from former VP candidate Sarah Palin
          • Rand does not support the entire RPR platform; he does believe in some foreign intervention.  He in fact is more like the next group
      • The TEA Parties
        • The modern day Tea Parties were originally started by libertarians mostly from the RPR crowd
        • As time moved on, and conservative pundits started to take notice, these events became more organized and basically became de facto arms of the Republican Party
        • The Tea Parties are now nothing more but a populist reincarnation of the fusionist movement that does little more than bash the President; the biggest difference is they are using even stronger libertarian rhetoric than before, therefore bringing in more libertarians into the fold
        • The first real “Tea Party” candidate to get elected to national office was Scott Brown from Massachusetts.  He continued down the path that many of the “Contract with America” legislatures did; he now supports ObamaCare and has voted for Democrat supported legislation.
        • To me the tea parties are a failure; Mark my words: Tea Party candidates will get elected and will just continue to expand the state
        • Liberaltarians: A libertarian/progressive alliance?
      • Some libertarians have suggested the idea that we should start a new fusionist movement with the progressives
      • The advantages of this arrangement would be a stronger coalition against aggressive war,  attacks on privacy, legalization of homosexual marriage, and dissolving laws on immigration
      • There are two problems with this:
        • Libertarians and Progressives fundamentally disagree about liberty; libertarians believe in negative liberty, which is freedom from other people (I.E. the NAP) vs progressives believing in positive liberty, which is having the resources at hand to fulfill one’s potential.  This difference would cause a lot of strain when it came to economic policy, which to many people is more important than social policy
        • There aren’t many true progressives that are in elected office neither.  Most Democrats are actually more conservative on the social issues that libertarians care about.
      • What should libertarians do?

Thanks for listening folks.  Next week I will be expanding on this topic a bit, talking about the libertarian split early on in the fusionist movement hopefully with a special guest.  You can email me at corey@vordshow.com if you have any questions or comments or just go to the website at vordshow.com and use the contact form