An Unstable Fusion

Today at Tech Central Station, Kenneth Silber tries to rekindle the romance between conservatism and libertarianism, which one could say has been on the rocks of late. Disagreements about everything from stem-cell research to the Iraq war threaten to put the final nail in the coffin of “fusionism” – the ideological glue (developed most notably by the late Frank Meyer) that held the conservative-libertarian alliance together throughout the Cold War (though there were notable defectors such as Murray Rothbard who broke with official conservatism over Vietnam, and the Cold War generally).

Silber believes that a kind of neo-fusionism can be forged centered around eschewing extremism, an outreach to right-leaning centrists and moderates who have accepted the necessity of limited government, and opposition to the growing authoritarianism (as Silber sees it) of the Left:

Does fusionism have a future? I believe it does. For one thing, the publication you are now reading has a distinctly fusionist coloration. Moreover, “libertarian conservative” (unlike “promiscuous celibate”) is in fact coherent. It describes someone who thinks libertarian institutions are worth conserving (and that a country embracing such institutions is worth defending). It implies a consistency in advocating both social and economic freedoms, and a recognition that both types of freedoms require responsibility and virtue.

On the face of it, fusionism seems like a neat way to resolve the disagreements between libertarians and conservatives. But is it really a coherent philosophical position?

The fundamental premise of fusionism is that virtue cannot be coerced. For an action to have moral worth, it must be freely chosen. Therefore, liberty should be the highest political goal, because maximizing liberty will expand the space for the exercise of virtue.

The problem with this is that, while it’s true that virtue can’t be coerced, it doesn’t follow that maximizing political liberty will have the result of maximizing the free exercise of virtue. And this is why fusionism can’t ultimately reconcile the differences between libertarians and conservatives.

Take pornography for example. All libertarians believe that pornography should be legal, while at least some conservatives would support restrictions on it. The libertarian believes that the State is justified in using the force of law to restrict only those behaviors that pose a threat to life, liberty and property. So long as all the parties involved are consenting adults, the libertarian (qua libertarian) sees no problem with pornography. For the libertarian, liberty is the chief end of politics.

The conservative, on the other hand, thinks that the chief end of politics is not liberty, but virtue. And sometimes the cultivation of virtue will be served by robust governmental action. Does this mean that the conservative thinks that virtue can be coerced? Not necessarily. What the conservative does think is not that the State can make people virtuous, but that it can make it easier for people to be virtuous. For instance, the widespread availability of pornography may provide a temptation for many people to lapse into vice, so the conservative will not necessarily oppose the State’s removing this “occasion for sin.” Now, whether or not such a move would be a good idea all things considered is a matter of prudential judgment (e.g. will this create a massive black market in pornography, undermine respect for the law, etc.). But the conservative has no objection in principle to restricting people’s choices for the sake of facilitating virtue.

While libertarians and conservatives will continue to find much to agree on (e.g. opposition to taxes), there’s probably no easy way to resolve the very real philosophical differences between them. As long as conservatives and libertarians have such different ideas about the ends of politics, there will be occasions for sharp disagreement about means. I suspect neo-fusionism is apt to prove as unstable as its predecessor.