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The following is an opinion contribution and reflects the author’s views alone.
In the mid-20th century, a small group of political activists forged a heterogeneous coalition to support the Republican Party and elect Ronald Reagan as President, and they shaped the American right for two generations. Today, a nascent group of intellectuals is recasting conservatism once more, this time with a cohesive vision. To understand the movement’s past and recognize its current trends is to give insight into the Post-Trump Republican Party.
Ronald Reagan could credit his 1980 election success to fusionism. Fusionism, developed by William Buckley Jr.’s National Review magazine, was a philosophy to unite “anti-liberals”: social traditionalists, American exceptionalists, and free-market purists. Religious Americans found a home in the GOP. They brought family values and the protection of the unborn to the forefront of the GOP’s agenda. Institutions, like the Family Research Council, and religious leaders, like Jerry Falwell Sr., publicly mingled with the party elite. Though many were not social conservatives, American exceptionalists also found a home in the Republican Party. Only slightly less extreme than its modern incarnation, the Democratic Party of the mid-20th century danced with anti-Americanism. Vietnam War protesters burned the American flag and early-stage identity politics fomented otherness in minority communities. In reaction to this, the neo-conservative movement was born. With Commentary magazine at its helm, neo-conservatism argued for an America-led liberal world order. Western values, the American exceptionalists insisted, ought to be appreciated and ensured within our own borders and beyond. The priests of libertarian economics were just as significant in galvanizing the American Right as the alienation caused by the radicalism of the 1960s Democratic Party. Polished with Ivy League degrees and Nobel Prizes, the Chicago school of economics, which advocated for laissez-faire over government intervention, converted legions of Americans to their ranks. Broadly, these three groups coalesced to deliver the Republican Party nomination and the presidency to Ronald Reagan. The political materialization of fusionist philosophy revealed its true purpose. In reality, fusionism was more a political sleight of hand than a coherent political ideology.
A political ideology works towards something; everything ought to be considered in relation to its goal, its vision of the good life. Fusionism plainly fails this test. The social conservatives’ state-curated moral society is in conflict with the unfettered freedom imagined by the economic libertarians. Neo-conservatives, whose moral matrix seems only tied to the hour’s zeitgeist, present no consistent standards for state involvement, making them unfit to sit with conservatives or libertarians. In contrast with the American progressive movement, descended from Enlightenment utopian theories and grounded in Rawlsian thought, the American conservative movement, under Fusionism, could offer no comprehensive, clear answer to any question. While the Democratic Party proffered policy solutions to order society in its image, the Republican Party could not come up with a compelling story for voters simply because the movement had no common conclusion. Donald Trump changed that. President Trump re-introduced a political ideology to the Republican Party.
President Trump’s 2016 campaign was not guided by policy positions; it was oriented by a political ideology. President Trump’s conservative instincts allowed his campaign to snub policy papers to sell a broader vision of society. President Trump’s nomination marked the end of fusionism and the dawn of a new conservative Republican Party.
The new Republican Party, driven by President Trump and prolific intellectuals, works towards one end: a religious society rich with strong civic organizations, where all Americans have the opportunity to raise and support their families as they see fit. The casualties of the new conservatism include the procedural liberties that conservatives once used as a defense of rights against progressive majoritarianism. Free speech, only an instrument to reach the Truth, is thrown out in favor of regulation of the speech that does not advance the Truth, as Sohrab Ahmari has argued. Under this thinking, flag burning ought to be criminalized, as President Trump has suggested. Veneration of originalism and textualism, long the hallmarks of the right-wing judiciary class, are scoffed by a growing few as an unfair rule that only conservatives maintain. It ought to be replaced by common good constitutionalism, as Adrian Vermeule has asserted, and judicial nominations ought to become politically driven, as Senator Josh Hawley has advocated on the Senate floor. Conservative think tanks, such as American Compass, now advocate for market manipulations to “bias” towards certain lifestyles — a far cry from a movement once defined by free market doctrinaires. And, Yoram Hazony, a biblical scholar and political philosopher, has awakened a nationalist foreign policy, which appraises national interests as American principles. The Republican Party of Reagan is out for the Republican Party of Trump, even if President Trump has not yet openly adopted all of the movement’s policy developments.
For better or for worse, there is a new consensus emerging in town. Fusionism’s inconsistencies leave no one satisfied. Americans have grown tired of commitments to institutions and processes that falsely promise to protect their communities. They understand that our way of life is under threat. For many Americans, the stakes could not be higher; it is time for the GOP to double down on its vision, no matter the casualties. Welcome to the future of American conservatism.
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