In the Tradition of Liberty.
In the Tradition of Liberty.
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FUSION’s archive of commentary.
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With the initial successes of President Trump’s second term, American conservatism is at a crossroads. The philosophical fractures and schisms among American conservatives are in significant ways not new. Questions about the purposes and proper ends of political society, the meaning of freedom and justice, and the place of order and authority remain as vital today as they were among the nascent conservative movement 70 years ago. In the wake of President Trump’s efforts to reform some of the country’s foremost academic institutions, questions about how conservatives should define and…
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The conflict of our time is not only military, economic, and diplomatic, but political, cultural, and philosophical. The clash is between systems with irreconcilable ideas—or, using the term neutrally, “ideals”—of government, the individual versus the state, human rights, and the rule of law. Adm. Samuel John Paparo, Jr., head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, recently warned that China’s military exercises near Taiwan signal not just readiness but intent to invade. Xi Jinping has made “reunification” with Taiwan a personal and ideological crusade. We recognize that the “success” of the People’s Republic…
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It is often the fate of great men that they are popularly known only for some pithy quote or bumper-sticker idea. We know Reagan as the man who said government is the problem, not the solution. We know Clausewitz as the man who said war is politics by other means. Another such unfortunate great man of the right is Frank S. Meyer. Anyone familiar with American conservative thought knows him as the father of “fusionism”. Ostensibly, the term designates a great melding of the minds between the traditionalists and libertarians.…
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During one of the final episodes of Yellowstone, on the eve of auctioning off the Dutton family’s assets, Beth Dutton instructs the bartender serving her guests to keep drinks light. Her rationale for doing so is stated simply “Hungover bidders do not spend money.” And Beth is right. Being in top form with a sound mind matters when making big decisions and precarious purchases. Taking chances, but doing so with confidence, is a unique feature of America’s entrepreneurial spirit—and the world has benefited greatly from it. Presently, though, investors and entrepreneurs…
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The papacy has been remarkably often in the news in our rather anti-clerical and increasingly secular age, making history in ways noticed and unnoticed. In 2013, Pope Benedict XVI retired, which is pretty much unheard of. Two weeks later, the papal conclave gave the world the first South American pope, Francis, who spent his 12-year papacy making headlines as well as serious changes to the Catholic Church. After his death on April 21, Easter Monday, another conclave was summoned. On May 8, it gave the world another shock: the…
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Since taking office in January, President Donald Trump has unleashed a torrent of executive orders and administrative regulations designed to remake the United States government. Many of these actions have gained both widespread attention and criticism. These debates tend to focus on specific issues, such as whether colleges and universities should be allowed to practice DEI. Yet the focus on culture wars obscures the deeper cause of the conflict: a dispute over whether the United States should be considered a pluralist nation or not. Forty-some years ago, pluralism was…
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The Persistence of the Ideological Lie: The Totalitarian Impulse Then and Now , by Daniel J. Mahoney. Encounter Books, 2025, 159 pages, $29.99. Promising to offer “a full-throated defense of moral and political sanity against the latest eruptions of ideological mendacity in our time,” The Persistence of the Ideological Lie: The Totalitarian Impulse Then and Now, is a breath of fresh air. In concise, elegant, and eminently readable prose, Daniel J. Mahoney, a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute and professor emeritus at Assumption University, castigates the enemies of liberty…
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In “The Constitution in Their Hearts” Michael Lucchese has written a Burkean account of conservatism that follows Russell Kirk in arguing: A) conservatism is fundamentally the same in America as Britain; and B) that John Adams plays the role of Burke in the United States. But he seems not to give enough thought to Kirk’s decision to entitle the lead chapter on Burke in The Conservative Mind “Burke and the Politics of Prescription,” and the following chapter on Adams “John Adams and Liberty Under Law.” In those titles Kirk implicitly…
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On the night of April 13, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro and his family hosted a Passover seder in their official residence in Harrisburg. Hours later, as they slept, a man snuck past security, threw Molotov cocktails into the house, and lit it on fire. Fortunately, the fire was extinguished. Though there was substantial property damage, the governor and his family escaped unharmed. What is striking, however, is the relative quiet that has followed—the absence of widespread condemnation or any sustained national conversation about what this incident might tell us about…
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The premise of Donald Trump’s trade war is that other countries should face tariff rates commensurate to the extent of their “cheating” in global trade. Trump insists that this extends well beyond tariffs, which are already zero or near-zero for most goods traded between the U.S. and its major trading partners. This is not a good way to make trade policy. It effectively cedes U.S. sovereignty over its tariff rates to the decisions made by other countries, and it’s based on the fiction that foreigners pay tariffs. Instead, tariffs are…