Don Devine, writing at The American Conservative, explores the problems of confusing the philosophical and experiential working out of the living tension among conservative principles, often referred to as fusionism, with the fusion of political coalitions.
How did Meyer, Buckley, and Reagan think about fusionism? Fusionism to them was a philosophical concept. It was a philosophy that considered the principles of freedom and tradition as naturally interrelated in a tension whose resulting moral force created Western civilization and its American offshoot. Tension (the term Meyer preferred to fusion) was a force that could hold traditionalism and freedom together, which made both part of one potential whole.
