Point of View October 19, 2026 – Hour 2 : Fusionism: Liberty, Virtue, & The Future of the American Right

[00:00:04] Across America, live, this is Point of View. And now, Dr. Merrill Matthews.

[00:00:20] And thank you for joining us here on Point of View. Merrill Matthews sitting in for Kerby Anderson today, and I am pleased to welcome to our microphones for the first time, I believe, Stephanie Slade. She is a senior editor at Reason Magazine and a fellow at the Acton Institute. In 2016, she was selected to the Robert Novak Journalism Fellowship. And in 2013, she was named a finalist for the Bastiat Prize for Journalism. Stephanie, thank you so much for joining us. Oh, I'm so delighted to be with you.

[00:00:49] Well, you have written a book, Fusionism. I've been talking a bit about it on the show before you joined us. Tell us a little bit about the Reason Foundation. You're with them, and how long have you been there? Sure. Yeah, so Reason Foundation is a nonprofit that does both policy development and advocacy. So from a free market, libertarian perspective, we do policy stuff.

[00:01:13] And it also publishes Reason Magazine, which is where I work. I'm a journalist with Reason Magazine, and it's basically a monthly print magazine and website that covers politics and culture from a libertarian, free minds and free markets perspective. I personally am a Christian libertarian, and I've been there for, believe it or not, 12 years.

[00:01:35] It's been, that's a while. You know, I noticed in the Wall Street Journal, I believe it was last week, if not right before that, the Wall Street Journal and its daily review of books included your book, Fusionism, there, and they had a good write-up. Why did you decide to write a book about sort of the conservative history? I've got a lot of conservative history books on my shelf. Why did you decide to write this one?

[00:01:58] That's a great question. Yeah. So I think in order to answer it, I have to start by sort of defining fusionism. And so I think in the simplest possible terms, I would say fusionism is just the idea that both liberty and virtue are necessary for human flourishing. So it's the fusion of liberty and virtue. We want to be free, but we want to use our freedom in a good way, right, to be moral people. And that's the idea of fusionism. These two things are fused. Liberty and virtue are mutually reinforcing.

[00:02:24] We need to care about both of them. We're not going to have a good society if we aren't focused on both those things. If we try to trade one away to get the other one, it's not going to work. And so this was a very influential idea within the conservative movement in the second half of the 20th century, so basically from World War II until about 10 years ago. I would say this fusion of liberty and virtue was essentially the consensus position among people who identify as conservatives within the United States.

[00:02:49] And that has somewhat changed in the last 10 years. I think that there is no longer a consensus around that. We can get to that a little more if you like a little later. But the reason that I decided to write the book is because I felt that it was a mistake for the conservative movement to abandon its intellectual fusionist heritage, this dual commitment. And I wanted to tell the story of how these ideas, this philosophy came to be the sort of foundation of the conservative movement as we know it and all the institutions that we think of as conservatism.

[00:03:19] So I wanted to tell that story and I wanted to defend that this is true. Liberty and virtue are both necessary for human flourishing. So it would be a mistake to abandon that. And when I went looking, I also have read many, many books about the conservative movement and conservative history. But I found that there was no book about this specific topic. You can find it in bits and pieces in other books. But there was no standalone book about the history of fusionism and making the case for fusionism. And I thought, well, that's that's a gap in the market and that deserves to exist.

[00:03:48] So I guess I will be the one to try to step up and fill it. You know, it's interesting because I had a little time before you came on and I mentioned a little bit about the sort of the paradox or the challenge between being free and then believing there's a moral order there and how those two interact, because if you've been involved in this for a while and in the movement and I have been,

[00:04:10] you frequently as coming as a conservative, I sometimes bump up against libertarians who want to have their sense of freedom is just so strong that you sometimes wonder where are your limits on that? And they oftentimes don't have many limits. And from a conservative standpoint, there are some limits there. Absolutely. Yeah. So the idea is that you need you need to be free in order to be able to exercise your moral muscle,

[00:04:37] muscles to make virtuous choices, to learn about what is who are we as human beings? What are the kinds of choices and habits that conduce to our flourishing that allow us to be the best versions of ourselves? You know, the most excellent versions of the person that God created us to be. That requires us to have the freedom to exercise choices, to make real choices. If you're only coerced into living a certain way, you're not really going to learn to be virtuous. That's not real virtue. But on the other hand, it is the case that some choices are good for us and some choices are bad for us.

[00:05:05] And so the problem where libertarianism can go wrong is if it becomes a sort of moral relativism that says all lifestyle choices are created equal and nobody can ever pass judgment on anybody else's choices. I think it's a mistake if you try to use coercion, you know, especially state government coercion, to force people to live in one way instead of another way. But that doesn't mean there isn't a better way to live and that we can't try to help to persuade people and encourage people and support people to make those better choices instead of those worse choices.

[00:05:35] Your book really focuses on the post-war conservative slash libertarian movement. And Frank Meyer plays a very important role. You discuss him a lot. Tell us a bit about Frank Meyer because we may have mentioned him here on the show at points, but we don't focus on him very much. Yeah, absolutely. He sort of disappeared from the conversation, which is too bad because he was a hugely influential figure during this period, basically from the founding of National Review Magazine, which is, you know, the flagship conservative magazine in the United States.

[00:06:03] It was founded in 1955. And for 17 years, Frank Meyer was one of the senior editors. He was the editor of the book section, so he oversaw all the book reviews that ran in that magazine. And he also wrote a column himself. He wrote a lot of essays. He wrote a book. And he was the guy who kind of articulated this fusionist synthesis, this idea of liberty and virtue, or another sort of more philosophical way to put it would be it's the synthesis of the classical liberal political tradition,

[00:06:29] which does emphasize individual freedom and individual rights and limited government, separation of powers, rule of law, free markets. That's all classical liberalism. The synthesis of that tradition with the Judeo-Christian moral tradition and the idea that these two traditions need each other. And what he argued was that these two traditions, classical liberalism and the Judeo-Christian tradition, came together at the American founding in a way that was unique in history. They had never quite been fused in that way before.

[00:06:56] You know, they both existed in various forms in various places at other times. But our founders were really influenced by both of these traditions. And when they created this experiment, this experiment in liberty that is the United States of America and wrote our founding documents, they were influenced by both. They cared about liberty and virtue. They were trying to figure out how to make a society that could be both free and moral and virtuous. And so what Frank Meyer argues is that they had it right, but that is a big part of what we mean when we talk about American exceptionalism,

[00:07:25] that we fused those two traditions in our history in a way that nobody else ever had. And it has infused our character as Americans ever since. And he says what it means to be a conservative in the American context, therefore, is to defend those principles and institutions of the American founding. And as a result, it means that conservatives here are defenders of liberty and virtue. That's what it means to be a conservative in America. In some other places, they wouldn't have a conservative with somebody who doesn't care that much about liberty.

[00:07:53] In another country, in France, for example, the conservatives are not as worried about free markets and individual freedom. They're worried about the moral order, but they are not as worried about or concerned about protecting freedom. But here we care about both, and that's what makes conservatism unique in the United States. So he's the guy, Frank Meyer is the guy who is sort of articulating this idea, this synthesis. And you'll notice that he's not saying that he's invented it or that he's bringing this out of whole class. He's saying this has been there all along in the water. It's what it means to be an American.

[00:08:23] It's what it means to be a conservative in America. And he's just sort of putting it down into words. He was extremely influential on the conservative movement during his lifetime. But because he died in 1972, he's sort of faded away out of the conversation since then. We've got to take a break. Our guest for this hour, Stephanie Slade, as she talks about her new book, Fusionism, the joining of liberty and virtue. Stay with us. We'll be right back.

[00:09:00] This is Viewpoints with Kirby Anderson. The 2026 election was about many issues, but a significant one was the lack of affordability. Unfortunately, few politicians want to admit that the real reason is the declining value of the dollar. Porter Stansberry in his new book tells the story of three generations. John, the grandfather, was born in 1938 in a small Pennsylvania town. He worked most of his life at Armstrong Court Company and raised a family on a single salary.

[00:09:30] He paid for all four of his children's college education. When he died, his estate was approximately $780,000, along with a paid-off house, a modest IRA, and Armstrong stock. David, his son, was born in 1968 and graduated from Penn State with a degree in mechanical engineering. He and his wife, who were part-time as a nurse, had three children. He still works at 60 but may retire in a few more years. But two of his children are moving home because they cannot afford a home. Jake is David's oldest son.

[00:09:58] He graduated from Penn State with a master's degree in computer science. He works remotely as a software developer for a firm in Seattle. He makes $142,000 a year but cannot buy a house because the median home in his zip code is $385,000 and he has $47,000 in student loans. And please don't tell him he can't make ends meet simply because he eats too much avocado toast. All three generations of these men had a good work ethic and made wise choices.

[00:10:25] What hurt each successive generation was inflation because the dollar was worth less. The price of houses and college tuition went up, but wages and salaries did not keep up. The real cause for the affordability crisis is the government that spends too much and fuels inflation. I'm Kirby Anderson, and that's my point of view.

[00:10:49] Go deeper on topics like you just heard by visiting pointofview.net. That's pointofview.net. You're listening to Point of View, your listener-supported source for truth. And welcome back to Point of View. I'm Merrill Matthews sitting in for Kirby Anderson, and joining me by phone, Stephanie Slade. She is an editor with Reason Magazine, and we're talking about her new book, Fusionism.

[00:11:18] And, Stephanie, you mentioned classical liberal. Those of us who sort of follow the history of the conservative movement, liberal, at least classical liberal, means something different than what we say when we say liberal today. So I've always kind of got to make sure people understand the difference there. So discuss that difference. Absolutely, yes. This is a very important distinction. So in this country, we tend to use the word liberal to mean left of center. We support progressive economics. You probably vote for a Democratic Party.

[00:11:49] Classical liberalism is almost kind of the opposite. It was a philosophy that wanted to limit government, have limited government to protect individual freedom and individual rights, separation of powers, rule of law, free markets, free trade, because we want people to be free, including economic freedom, being able to trade with each other, being able to keep the fruits of your own labor. So all this stuff that sort of prioritizes individual liberty and tries to constrain the state, the government,

[00:12:15] because government always, you know, too much power concentrated in any one set of hands risks becoming tyrannical. Our founders certainly believed that. So classical liberalism is a sort of political philosophy that wants to constrain the state, that wants to keep it really limited, to protect individual freedom. And a really important thing for me about classical liberalism also is that it's a way of – it's supposed to be a way of allowing a diverse population of different people with different values,

[00:12:41] different religious beliefs coming from different backgrounds, to live peacefully and coexist with each other in a shared society. Because if you're trying to – if you think there's only one good way to live and we're going to use the state, the government, to impose that way of life on everybody, then everybody is going to constantly see every political battle as a battle, an existential battle, you know, life or death stakes. Because if I don't win this election, if I don't – my side doesn't take power, then the other side is going to take power and is going to impose their religion or their values on me

[00:13:10] and force me to live according to their values. And so what I must do – I have no choice – by whatever means necessary is to acquire power and use it to impose my way of life on them first. That's not a very – that's not a way of approaching politics that allows for, you know, peaceful coexistence and flourishing and, you know, a prosperous economy. So liberalism says, hey, we're not going to try to impose any particular way of life on everybody. We're going to have a government that just protects basic rights and liberties, make sure you're free,

[00:13:39] and then different people can pursue what they think is a virtuous life on their own terms and try to persuade other people to live that way but not try to make everybody live that way using the law. So you also discuss Russell Kirk in there, and this is a famous conservative – The Conservative Mind, that book, and a number of other books. How does he play into this history? I think that when I started out to write this book, I started doing my research.

[00:14:08] I thought that there was going to be – it was going to be a story about two different camps, the sort of traditionalist, socially conservative camp that is focused on virtue, that thinks that individual virtue is the most important value and we need to have politics that reflects that. And then on the other side, there was going to be a libertarian camp that thinks that the, you know, individual liberty is the highest value and we need a government and a system of government that reflects that. So I started out and I thought, okay, Russell Kirk, he is the obvious choice for a traditional social conservative, Christian conservative.

[00:14:38] He believes in a sort of traditionalist, religious, transcendent understanding of the human person and of what a good life looks like. He thinks, you know, we were created by God and there's a certain way to live, that we have moral obligations to each other, and that the government should – our laws should reflect that fact and should help or encourage or require us to live a certain way. However, when I started reading Russell Kirk, what I realized is that although he is a religious traditionalist and he is a social conservative and he does believe that God made us in a certain way

[00:15:06] and there are better – you know, some choices are better than others, he turns out not to want to use the power of the state very much at all to make people live a certain way. He recognizes – and this I think is because that fusion of liberty and virtue is so deeply rooted in America and in the conservative movement in America that even somebody who is quite religious and is quite conservative, socially conservative, and very focused on religious tradition

[00:15:31] and all the traditions that are handed down, he still recognizes that a powerful government is dangerous, it can become tyrannical, and that individual freedom is a condition for human flourishing and for virtue. And so he actually wants there to be a limited government. In many ways, he is quite libertarian, and I think that's just a great example of how even conservatives in this country have traditionally also been believers in individual freedom and limited government. And how does Frederick Hayek come in here?

[00:15:57] Because he was a major influence in the University of Chicago for a while, I believe. Yes, that's correct. So Frederick Hayek is a Nobel-winning economist. He's originally from Austria. He then spent some time in the U.K. at the London School of Economics and eventually comes to the University of Chicago. He's a libertarian economist. He's very focused on free markets, on limited government, a rule of law. These are the things that matter a lot to him. And so we think of him as being somebody, or at least I started out when I was writing this book,

[00:16:24] thinking that if Russell Kirk was going to be my sort of avatar or example of a religious traditionalist, Frederick Hayek is going to be my example of a libertarian. And he's representing the other camp that thinks that liberty is the highest value. And I thought this was going to be a story about how they battled it out to see which one is going to be the dominant value in America. Is it going to be liberty or is it going to be virtue? But again, when I started reading Hayek, just like when I started reading Kirk, I realized it's much more complicated than that.

[00:16:50] And although Hayek is a libertarian economist, he does believe in free markets and limited government and rule of law. He is not a dogmatist. He thinks there is, you know, some role for government in keeping, you know, in creating a good society and making sure that the least among us have some basic needs met. And very importantly, he believes that tradition, including religion, has a very important role in allowing society to function in a sort of civilized order. We need people who are well-formed as moral human beings. And religion and tradition handed down through the generations

[00:17:19] and all the norms and institutions that are handed down through tradition is how we make sure that our civilized society continues on. And if instead you become a sort of radical, rational libertarian who wants to sort of tear down all the existing institutions and liberate people from everything, from organized religion and from etiquette and norms and from the traditional family and let everybody live the way they want to live without any guidance from tradition,

[00:17:46] you're actually not going to preserve a flourishing, free, good society. You're going to, you know, raid it to the ground and something that replaces it is probably not going to be any better. So Frederick Hayek, despite being a libertarian and caring a lot about individual liberty, he recognizes that. And he really has a lot of respect for institutions, for civil society institutions, for traditions, for things that are handed down from one generation to the next in terms of wisdom about how to live a good life and how to structure a healthy, flourishing, civilized society.

[00:18:14] You know, for those of us who have had debates with people about this, you know, I know one time, this has been a few years ago, I was talking to, well, actually before President Biden came in, but I was talking to a libertarian, pretty pure libertarian. And we were talking about people coming across and I said, you know, we need to have a system of legal immigration. We don't want people coming in legally. And from a libertarian side, as I understood him, he basically did not feel countries should have borders,

[00:18:43] that people should be able to come and go from a country when they want to, because that was the aspect of freedom. And we disagreed on that. But it was interesting to see how strongly he felt that a country doesn't have borders, a country, people should be able to move from one country to the other at their will, regardless of whether or not the government approves it or not. Yeah, I mean, this is a tough one, because obviously when we all think about something like the East versus West Berlin, right?

[00:19:11] East versus West Germany during the Cold War. You know that there is something that is immoral. I think that we all recognize there's a problem when people are prevented from moving across borders, when you're trapped in one place where there's, you know, sort of oppressive or tyrannical government, and there's no free markets and there's no freedom at all. Human rights are being violated, as we saw a lot during the Cold War years in these communist countries.

[00:19:36] And one of the things they had to do is put up walls to keep the people in and stop them from crossing over out of, you know, from the communist world into the free world. So I think freedom of movement and the right or the sort of freedom that people want to pass to cross borders and go to where they can make a better, fair life for themselves is a thing that we should value. But I think it probably that thinking that that's the only value or the highest value and that there's never a case for there being any kinds of borders or controls over who can go where,

[00:20:05] that maybe is taking it a bit far. Yes, I just, having had interactions with pure libertarians at times, you end up finding there are some differences there. But on the other hand, as a person who is a conservative, I sometimes, we have engagements with people who we disagree with their lifestyle and still yet have to live in the same society and many times work with them, even though I may disagree with some of the things they do in their lifestyle.

[00:20:36] Exactly right. I think one of the things that's wonderful about both the Judeo-Christian moral tradition, my values of the Christian, and also the classical liberal tradition is that they both actually point to treating other people with respect, recognizing that every human being has inherent dignity and they should be treated with respect. And you might disagree with them and you might argue with them and you might try to get them to live a different way, but that you shouldn't be trying to, you know, there's a way, there's one way of approaching politics that is sort of politics as a war in which we try to acquire power and destroy our enemies.

[00:21:04] And there's another way of approaching politics or approaching life that says, I'm going to treat people with respect. I'm going to be civilized towards them, civil towards them. I'm going to try to persuade them to live in a better way, but I'm not going to try to treat this as a war over who's going to dominate and destroy each other. We'll be back with our discussion with Stephanie Slade. Stay with us on Point of View.

[00:21:32] It almost seems like we live in a different world from many people in positions of authority. They say men can be women and women men. People are prosecuted differently or not at all depending on their politics. Criminals are more valued and rewarded than law-abiding citizens. It's so overwhelming, so demoralizing. You feel like giving up, but we can't. We shouldn't. We must not.

[00:22:00] As Winston Churchill said to Britain in the darkest days of World War II, never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy. And that's what we say to you today. This is not a time to give in, but to step up and join Point of View in providing clarity in the chaos.

[00:22:25] We can't do it alone, but together, with God's help, we will overcome the darkness. Invest in biblical clarity today at pointofview.net or call 1-800-347-5151 pointofview.net and 800-347-5151 Point of View will continue after this.

[00:23:00] You are listening to Point of View. The opinions expressed on Point of View do not necessarily reflect the views of the management or staff of this station. And now, here again, Dr. Merrill Matthews. And we're back with Reason Magazine editor Stephanie Slade, and we're talking about her new book, Fusionism, which I believe we have a link to on our website, pointofview.net, if you'd like to go look at that.

[00:23:28] And Stephanie, you mentioned National Review being formed in 1955. It became sort of the place where libertarians and conservatives of many different stripes were able to come and debate issues, and the people could, and the public could sort of see that debate play out. Of course, we still have National Review with us now, and we often link to articles from National Review. But how did National Review play a role? Oh, it was so influential, exactly the way that you just said.

[00:23:57] It was a place where various people who identify as being sort of conservative or right of center, mostly American, although not exclusively, could write articles and could debate ideas and could sort of help to develop the ideas that became the commitments that conservatives out there in the public and also, you know, conservative politicians who would eventually run for office, somebody like Ronald Reagan, would sort of internalize and come to form the intellectual foundations of what conservatism would mean in America.

[00:24:27] So this is where the intellectual work is happening. The ideas are getting developed. They're getting hammered out. They're getting debated. And then they're getting released into the sort of national conversation to be an influence on what people who identify as conservatives are going to stand for for many decades to come. And it ultimately leads to Ronald Reagan becoming governor of California and then eventually president of the United States. Yes, he was so influenced by all of this.

[00:24:53] So he was a guy, this virtue, liberty synthesis that, you know, I call fusionism, that Frank Meyer and others at National Review believed in, this was an influence on Reagan. He was reading the magazine. He was reading Russell Kirk and Friedrich Hayek and Frank Meyer. He basically campaigned as he wouldn't necessarily have used the word fusionism. I would say that word kind of disappeared from the conversation because it just became what it means to be a conservative, somebody who believes in that dual commitment to liberty and virtue. And so he identified as a conservative,

[00:25:23] and he ran a campaign of respecting individual liberty, of wanting to have a limited government, right, free markets, that sort of thing. But also, of course, being a person of faith, being a person of piety, and the thinking that we need to have, just as our founders believe, we need to have a moral population, a virtuous population, in order for this experiment in liberty to actually have any chance of being sustained. So he believes these things. He campaigns on these things. These themes appear over and over again in all of his speeches.

[00:25:52] I went through so many of his speeches when I was working on my book, and you just, there's just beautiful, eloquent descriptions of what he thinks a flourishing society looks like. And it's one that is both free and virtuous. You know, one of the, I would argue that Reagan sort of set the tone for what it meant to be a conservative, set the standard that lasted from, he was in the 1980s through the 90s and most of the 2000s. When Barack Obama comes in, we see the rise of the Tea Party movement.

[00:26:19] And then with President Trump, we see another, let's say, evolution or change in conservatism. Talk a bit about that change and what it means to be, because you mentioned what you call right-wing progressives, which is an unusual term for a conservative. That's exactly right. So if you think of what it means to be a progressive, I think the main thing that we think about is somebody who wants to use government in order to try to shape society to bring about better outcomes. And specifically, often that means it would be a left of center.

[00:26:49] Historically, in the United States, the progressive movement was on the left. And it was people who said, we think that we can use government power and government actors, the bureaucracy, the president, to manage the economy, to tweak the economy, to sort of pull the levers and pass the regulations and bring about better economic outcomes that will do better for people. And historically, conservatives said, you know what? We don't think that that works. Conservatives in America said, we think that it's, you know, you might be doing it with the best of intentions, but we don't think that actually the government can manage the economy from the top down.

[00:27:18] That's what socialists try to do. And in a free economy, we think decisions and outcomes bubble up from the bottom up. The people in the marketplace make the decisions that are right for them and their families, and then the markets provide, the businesses provide, and the ones that do a good job of meeting people's needs succeed, and the ones that do a bad job go out of business, and those resources can be used for some other more higher, more productive purpose. That's the sort of conservative free market answer, whereas the progressives said, we want to use government in this variety of strategic ways,

[00:27:48] subsidies, regulations. We want to have maybe tariffs that would, you know, that would be a tax on imports in order to try to bring about outcomes that we think are better. We think we can do better than the free market. And that was a progressive perspective. But you'll notice, if you're paying attention, that now there are many people on the right of center, on the conservative side, the Republican side, who have sort of embraced a more progressive economic belief that we can use industrial policy, we can use tariffs, we can use subsidies, we can use regulations

[00:28:17] to try to shape the economy, to try to bring about better outcomes than the free market would provide on its own. So I would describe that as a form of right-wing progressivism. You also mentioned Christian nationalism in there, and I find this a very interesting movement because, and we talk about it here on Point of View, it's indisputable that many or the large majority of the founders of America were professing Christians, they went to church,

[00:28:46] some of them were even what we might call evangelicals in their faith. And so that was there, and that mindset, that Judeo-Christian mindset, sort of guided many of the things that they were doing as they were writing the Constitution, Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and so forth, even though they had the First Amendment, which doesn't allow the government to come in and regulate religion in our society. But you have a rise recently here of people who say,

[00:29:15] we need to get back to a Christian nationalism where Christianity sort of guides the laws, has a major influence, maybe even a state religion. What is the rise of Christian nationalism as you understand it? Yeah, it's hard to answer that question because that term can be used by a lot of different people in a lot of different ways. And I think a lot of, you know, if you do a poll of people in the United States, you'll find that most Americans, or at least some large percentage of Americans, do think that we had a Christian founding. And by the way,

[00:29:45] I think there's a strong case to be made. I had an article in Reason Magazine in our July issue, which was our big, you know, America 250 celebrating the Declaration of Independence anniversary, where I say America was founded. Yeah, it was a lot of fun to research because I got to go back and read the founders. And there's all these quotes that, as you say, show that the founders were Christians for the most part, or at least even the ones who were not maybe orthodox believers. They believed that Christianity and religion played a really important role in society

[00:30:12] and that we wouldn't be able to survive with a limited government and sort of free, this experiment in liberty wouldn't work unless you also had a virtuous religious population. So Christianity was infusing what was going on at the founding. That's totally true. And yet they were also believers in separation of church and state. They did not want to have a state religion at the national level. They originally allowed there to be state religions at the state level. But even that, you know, the different states tried it and they thought, yeah, you know, this actually doesn't, this doesn't really work as well as we thought it was.

[00:30:40] And so all the states voluntarily chose to disestablish their state churches and say, we're just going to have pure religious freedom. We think that that's actually the conditions that allow people to act out upon their consciences, right? To have freedom of conscience, to pursue the good and to pursue a relationship with God as they, as they, as they sort of, in the way that they think is best for them, that they, that they feel God calling them to having a regime that protects sort of in a very, in a, in a very robust way, religious freedom and freedom of conscience.

[00:31:09] They decided was the better way. It's not because they're anti-religion. It's not because they're anti-Christian. It's because they think actually that Christianity and religion flourishes more in a society where government kind of keeps its hands off, where government stays out of it, where we don't have an entanglement between these two things. And in fact, when Alexis de Tocqueville comes here in the 1830s and writes his famous book, Democracy in America, that was one of his observations was that in Europe, they sort of feel like the religion and liberty pull in opposite directions. But here,

[00:31:37] everybody thinks that the more liberty you have, the more religion you have, the more flourishing religion you have. And we, in fact, do have a more flourishing religion, a more religious society here in the United States, where we have separation of church and state, as opposed to somewhere like Europe, where they, many places still have an established church. And yet hardly anybody goes to church. So anyway, that was the case that the founders made for, although they were very pro-religion, not entangling it with government. And so the, the, the Christian nationalists of today, some of them just want to keep, you know, keep the system that, that the founders believed in. And that,

[00:32:07] that would be a not very controversial. It shouldn't be a very controversial position. On the other hand, there are some that say, you know, basically the founders didn't go far enough. We need more, we need less separation of church and state. We need more entanglement between the two. And we want to have a government that, that really tries to nudge people in a particular direction, maybe even having a religious test for office, where if you're not a baptized Christian, you wouldn't be able to hold public office or have full citizenship, citizenship, citizenship rights.

[00:32:34] That would be a much more radical position that I think is, is less historically, it's less consistent historically with our, our system of government in the United States. And so it just depends when somebody, when you say Christian nationalism or somebody is a Christian nationalist, you kind of have to go deeper and see what exactly do they, what do they mean when they use that term? You, you also talk about some of the emerging elements on the right, like Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens and so forth. So when we come back from the break, I want you to address how they are,

[00:33:04] how they are emerging because they claim to be Christian. They use Christian terms and so forth. And yet they seem to be drifting away from what's been sort of the historic view of, of Christianity in the role of the country. So I want you to stay with us and consider that when we come back, my guest for one more segment, Stephanie Slade. She is the author of fusionism as she talks about the history of the conservative movement in the United States and some of the changes that are developing in that conservative movement, even as we speak.

[00:33:34] So we'll be right back in just a moment. You're listening to point of view,

[00:34:01] your listener supported source for truth. And welcome back with our final segment with Stephanie Slade on her book fusionism. And Stephanie, the you have Candace Owen and Tucker Carlson. Both were, I would argue at one point considered sort of in the traditional Christian conservative movement. They have moved into a different place.

[00:34:25] Both of them seem to be much more critical of Israel and the Israel Israeli actions of some, even in Jewish accents, Candace Owen suggesting that maybe the Jewish state was behind the killing of Charlie, the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Tucker Carlson has been seemingly somewhat supportive of, of Vladimir Putin and Russia. What do you make, but these people have large followings. What do you make of this? And how is that affecting the conservative movement?

[00:34:55] Yeah, it is. It reflects the fact that there really is a schism in many ways that have opened up, has opened up on the right in America where, whereas there was once a fairly, I mean, it's, you don't want to overstate it, but there was a pretty widespread consensus about what I was talking about earlier, the sort of commitment to liberty and virtue, free markets, limited government. Now there is, there are a million different ways to be on the right, to be a sort of part of the broad conservative movement. And, and so, and some of the, those strains and figures,

[00:35:23] and I don't want to focus specifically on either of those two people by name, because of course their views are changing all the time and have been, but there is a rise definitely in a sort of white nationality. You see this online where people will say America was, it was supposed to be a white country. And so all these Brown people that we're letting come in here, that was a mistake. We need to send them all back to where they came from. There, there is, there is a sort of antisemitism. You hear not just maybe people who are critical of policy choices that the government of Israel has made, which I think, you know,

[00:35:53] we can agree or disagree on any given government's policy choices, but people saying things like, no, the Jews as a people are controlling our society and making things worse. And it's a conspiracy. There's a lot of conspiracy theories that have emerged. There is, there is some antisemitism. There are people out there, especially young men online who are saying things like, it was a mistake to give women the right to vote. We need to, we need to take that back. That was a mistake. We, that we shouldn't have done that. Women, women don't deserve to have equal rights. They don't have the capacities to be a member,

[00:36:22] full members of society, members with full citizenship rights. So there's just a lot, there's a lot going on. There's not, you mentioned the sort of seemingly cozying up by certain people on the right to Putin and Russia in part, because they, they seem to say like, well, he's a strong leader and that's what we need. Or he represents traditional values. He doesn't have any, any tolerance for the sort of LGBT agenda. And so that, that that's, you know, he's maybe he would think that he's a representative of a Christendom of, of a strong, you know,

[00:36:53] Christianity that's, that's, that's tied to the state. In some way. But I think these are just really dangerous paths to go down. And also Carlson has also had guests on his show who are essentially Holocaust revisionists or Holocaust deniers, you know, suggest that either the things that we, that we've been taught about the number of Jews that were killed and the number of people who were killed in the Holocaust were exaggerated, or that in fact, the, the allied powers and, and Winston Churchill were the real enemies. I mean, these are pretty,

[00:37:20] pretty radical positions to be taking out that are not really, they can, they're just, they're very, they seem very foreign compared to the Reagan style conservatism. That was very pro America, very, you know, pro Christianity, but not in a, and not in a, in a sense that we need to tie it to the government and impose it by force. And certainly a Reagan style conservatism would be more, more welcoming, more inclusive, more upbeat, more positive, as opposed to the sort of very dark conspiracy thinking that we're seeing emerge out of, out of the right in many places these days.

[00:37:50] All of these groups that we're talking about have, have at some point have been under the Republican banner. And yet you've got these factions that are arising and they're sort of tearing at each other. How does this ultimately affect the Republican party? Because a party that's very segmented and attacking each other, it becomes very hard to be able to win elections. It does. That's definitely true. And I think that we're going to see some pretty nasty debates playing out in the next couple of years,

[00:38:18] because right now there is people are looking forward and they're saying, you know, the sort of post Trump era is coming. And there are a lot of, like I said, there are a lot of different ways to be a conservative, a lot of different sort of philosophical commitments and political approaches that are kind of being represented by these different factions. And which one is going to be the one that comes out on top. And that determines the sort of future of the conservative movement and Republican politics after 2028. We know what we have right now, but it's sort of an open question. What's going to be next.

[00:38:45] And so I think there's going to be a lot of fighting and a lot of pretty bitter fighting and debating about that among the different camps going forward. That's unfortunate in some ways, because as you point out, it's hard to get anything done when you, when you don't have a consensus. On the other hand, I think that these are really important questions and really important debates. And many of these philosophical disagreements get to the very root of what you believe as a person and as a society. If you believe in white nationalism, as opposed to,

[00:39:15] if you believe in the, in the equal dignity of every human person, regardless of race, religion, ethnicity, those are very fundamental foundational differences. Same with the sort of progressive economics, right-wing progressivism we were talking about earlier. If you believe that free markets bring about better outcomes and that people should be free to make economic choices for themselves with minimal government interference, that's a very fundamentally different perspective and position than somebody who thinks, no, we need to have a government that, that is willing to sort of aggressively intervene.

[00:39:44] We think we can bring about better outcomes by intervening in the economy with subsidies and tariffs and regulations and whatnot. These are, these are really, it's very hard to reconcile or to even find a compromise position. So we have to have these debates out. This is really important. I mean, otherwise it's going to be, it's, we're just going to be sort of at war with each other forever. So there, there does need to be these debates figured in that American people are ultimately the voters are the ones who are going to have to decide which of these visions is the one that they want to be the one that the,

[00:40:10] the next standard bearer for the Republican party and the conservative movement is going to represent. You know, one of the things that the Republican party has going for it is the democratic party seems to be a fracturing as well between the progressives and the more traditional Democrats. And we don't know how that's going to play out, but we are liable to see something like that after this midterm election as the Democrats try to determine the future of their party. Yes, this is absolutely correct. I think we're living through an interesting moment because there are

[00:40:40] sort of intellectual civil wars happening on both the left and the right right now between different factions and different visions. And on the democratic side, there is the more socialist and more identity positive militant, far left identity politics oriented factions. And then there are the more sort of center left factions. They sometimes are associated with what's called the abundance agenda or, you know, getting government regulations out of the way so that they would say, so that the government can do good things like, you know, build high speed rail or something like that. And what's called the popularist faction,

[00:41:10] which said, Hey, listen, Democrats forget all this very unpopular, very radical identity politics, you know, trying to force people to say the right, the right pronouns for people who have chosen to identify as a different gender. So this is very unpopular. The voters don't like it. Let's stop doing that stuff. And instead focus on the issues that people do care about, that voters do say consistently that they care about, such as bringing down the cost of living. So there's a more, a more moderate and reasonable, I would say insane faction. And there's a more radical far left faction. There's,

[00:41:40] there's just a lot of really interesting debates going on between, between the different camps on the left as well. And we don't know what's going to happen because they also have a, are going to have an open primary for the democratic nominee for president in 2028. And so whether it ends up being somebody from the more moderate faction or from the more radical sort of far left faction, I think that's going to determine a lot about the shape of our politics as well. Well, Stephanie, what do you have another project in mind? Are you going to come up with another book here soon or what's, what's on the agenda for you? I don't know. I'm right now.

[00:42:10] I'm busy out on the road promoting this book, which has only now been out for about a month and a half. I thought I'm not rushing into writing another one. I also love my job at reason magazine, and I'm very lucky to get to write long magazine articles. So, you know, not just quick turnaround pieces that are tied to the news of the day, but long, what are called feature articles that allow me to spend sometimes weeks or even months researching and reporting and interviewing people and then write a long essay? That's really fun and a real privilege for me getting to do, to work at working at reason magazine. And so I'm looking forward to once my book tour is over,

[00:42:40] getting back to doing a lot more of that. Stephanie, thank you so much for joining us and sharing your insights on the history of conservatism. It's a pleasure to be with you. That was Stephanie Slade. She is the author of fusionism, liberty, virtue, and the future of the American right. We've been talking about the future of the American right. It's in, it's, it's facing some challenges as is the American left. Well, thank you for joining us. I want to thank Megan for doing the engineering and Derek for doing the producing.

[00:43:10] And thank you for joining us here. Oh, point of view. In 19th century London, two towering historical figures did battle, not with guns and bombs, but words and ideas. London was home to Karl Marx, the father of communism and legendary Baptist preacher, Charles Spurgeon. London was in many ways, the center of the world economically, militarily, and intellectually.

[00:43:38] Marx sought to destroy religion, the family, and everything the Bible supports. Spurgeon stood against him, warning of socialism's dangers. Spurgeon understood Christianity is not just religious truth. It is truth for all of life. Where do you find men with that kind of wisdom to stand against darkness today? Get the light you need on today's most pressing issues delivered to your inbox

[00:44:04] when you sign up for the viewpoints commentary at pointofview.net slash signup. Every weekday in less than two minutes, you'll learn how to be a person of light to stand against darkness in our time. It's free. So visit pointofview.net slash signup right now. Pointofview.net slash signup.

[00:44:31] Point of view is produced by point of view ministries.