Conservatism is almost as divided as America, split between divergent brands that range from traditional and social conservatism to libertarian and constitutional conservatism. But there is no reason to despair — conservatives have never marched in lockstep. Just as they oppose centralized economic planning, so do they oppose centralized political planning. The conservative movement is a loosely bound movement made up of, in Morton Blackwell’s words, “activists, scholars, donors, and organizational entrepreneurs held together by . . . shared philosophy, shared enemies, and shared experiences.”
And it is a movement that comes together when confronted with a common foe. Such was the case in the 1960s when National Review editor Frank Meyer proposed a synthesis of the traditionalist and libertarian strains of conservatism that came to be called “fusionism.”
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