Conservative politics in 2025 faces a defining moment. The long-standing fusion of moral traditionalism and political libertarianism has lost its once dominant influence, with the risk of becoming irrelevant. Under Vice President-elect J.D. Vance, National Conservatives prepare to reshape the movement in a populist direction. Worse, they propose an unprecedented expansion of state power to transform American culture. Despite their continued presence in conservative institutions, traditional fusionist intellectuals have little cause for optimism in the second Trump administration.
If fusionists wish to rebuild their movement, they must renew efforts to address their philosophical weaknesses. Chief among these is an inadequate account of how freedom and virtue interact. For the fusionist, they’re supposed to buttress one another. Harvard political philosopher Harvey Mansfield articulates the traditional fusionist position: “A free people, with greater opportunity to misbehave than a people in shackles, needs the guidance of an inner force to replace the lack of external restraint. And virtue cannot come from within, or truly be virtue, unless it is voluntary and people are free to choose it.” This argument suggests that limited government requires virtuous citizens, while genuine virtue requires freedom from state coercion. Yet this central claim remains unproved.
While some scholars have investigated how market freedoms might promote self-restraint and reduce social violence, most fusionist assertions regarding the balance of freedom and virtue remain unchallenged. This absence of a solid theoretical foundation has made fusionism susceptible to criticism from the illiberal right. Establishing a more robust defense necessitates drawing from various disciplines. The most significant potential lies within the PPE (philosophy, politics, and economics) academic movement.
The fusionist movement found its chief theorist in Frank Meyer, who developed the most comprehensive defense of fusionist principles in the mid-20th century. Meyer’s theory rests on the crucial claim that moral virtue requires freedom from state control. As Meyer explained, “Virtue is only virtue when freely chosen,” which means government force makes genuine virtue impossible. Under conditions of freedom, Meyer argued, local communities would cultivate individual virtue through voluntary associations.
Meyer’s emphasis on freedom as a prerequisite for virtue directly challenged traditionalist conservatives. Russell Kirk, their foremost thinker, inverted Meyer’s causal chain, asserting that local communities must first foster virtue through cultural practices and social hierarchies. Kirk contended that traditional social institutions shape individual character through moral development and restraint. Only citizens possessing this character are capable of safeguarding freedom. Indeed, these citizens will desire it. Kirk differentiated between the mere absence of constraint and the genuine freedom to pursue the good, arguing that, without virtue, individuals are not truly free. In Kirk’s perspective, virtue is a skill that enables people to effectively use their freedom to pursue the good.
Wilhelm Röpke connected Meyer’s focus on freedom with Kirk’s emphasis on character. As a conservative economist, Röpke explored how market freedom and moral character influence one another. He contended that, while free markets foster the common good, they cannot endure without moral foundations nurtured outside the market system itself. “The sphere of the market,” Röpke maintained, “is defensible only as part of a wider general order encompassing ethics, law, the natural conditions of life and happiness.” Markets require particular virtues—honesty, diligence, and foresight—that can develop only through community life. Röpke concluded that individuals can only cultivate the moral character necessary to sustain a market economy through such communal bonds.
The fusionist tradition peaked intellectually in the work of Michael Novak, who integrated economic and religious arguments to support democratic capitalism. Building on Catholic social teaching and political economy, Novak argued that virtuous citizens are essential for maintaining freedom, but the government cannot effectively impose virtue. Virtue and freedom can mutually reinforce each other, as democratic capitalism allows room for both.
These competing theories must address concrete social challenges. Fusionist thinkers first developed their ideas in response to the rise of socialism. Today’s conservatives face new challenges, such as exploring the relationship between freedom and virtue in digital contexts. Social media platforms pose a significant test case, representing an unprecedented experiment that merges near-absolute freedom of expression with minimal institutional constraints.
The relationship between state power and moral development in social media reveals weaknesses in traditional fusionist thinking. Meyer would have predicted that unrestricted online expression would enhance public discourse. Experience has shown, however, that the lack of constraints allow coordinated harassment campaigns that in fact stifle open dialogue. Kirk’s focus on moral formation through institutions seems equally insufficient, as efforts at content moderation provoke resistance, in that they tend to silence opinions that conflict with those of the platform’s administrators. And algorithm-driven civic discourse fails to foster the organic community development he envisioned. Even Röpke’s market-based solutions struggle to clarify how platforms should balance user freedom with community standards.
These challenges highlight why conservatives need improved tools for analyzing liberty-virtue relationships. Progress demands that we go beyond broad assertions that freedom fosters virtue and that virtue safeguards freedom. Instead, we must carefully differentiate between various forms of liberty and virtue while investigating the specific mechanisms through which they influence one another. The LVR framework provides one way forward.
Understanding the relationship between liberty and virtue requires precise analytical tools. The Liberty-Virtue Relationship (LVR) framework breaks down conservative claims into three components: a conception of liberty (L), a conception of virtue (V), and the mechanism that connects them (R). This systematic approach reveals hidden assumptions and tensions in conservative thought that broad generalizations about freedom and virtue obscure.
Reflect on how the framework distinguishes key conservative claims.
Meyer’s LVR illustrates how negative liberty fosters virtue through voluntary choice. This seemingly straightforward assertion highlights a critical assumption: that capacity for choice precedes the development of virtue. Meyer, however, never clarifies how individuals cultivate this initial ability for meaningful choice.
Kirk’s LVR inverts this relationship: Traditional communities nurture virtuous character, allowing authentic liberty. Yet Kirk’s framework struggles to articulate how communities initially foster the virtue necessary to shape individual character. Meyer and Kirk encounter a chicken-and-egg dilemma that their theories do not resolve.
Röpke’s market-focused LVR uncovers another tension: Markets demand moral foundations that market freedom alone cannot produce. His framework posits that different types of liberty may relate variously to different virtues. This insight is essential for policy design.
Novak addresses these tensions by demonstrating how democratic capitalism creates environments for both individual choice and community formation. His LVR framework demonstrates how liberty and virtue evolve together within democratic and capitalist institutions.
This systematic analysis reveals a fundamental division in conservative thought—one that mere description obscures. Meyer sees liberty as the source of virtue, while Kirk and Röpke view virtue as the foundation of freedom, and Novak claims that liberty and virtue evolve together under democratic capitalism. More importantly, the LVR framework demonstrates why this division creates challenges that conservatives must confront.
Applying the LVR framework to conservative thought reveals three fundamental challenges that previous fusionist theory failed to adequately address.
The first challenge concerns causation. Meyer’s LVR framework claims that freedom enables virtue through voluntary choice, while Kirk’s framework asserts that virtue enables freedom through virtuous citizens defending free institutions. This apparent circular dependency creates a significant theoretical problem: How can either freedom or virtue emerge if each requires the other? The interdependence between these concepts requires a more sophisticated account of their mutual development.
The second challenge involves competing definitions. Meyer’s conception of authentic virtue requires negative liberty as its prerequisite—only freely chosen actions are genuinely virtuous. Kirk reverses this reasoning by defining true liberty as the ability for authentic self-direction. Virtuous character comes before freedom. This conceptual tension compels us to explore whether freedom or virtue is the more fundamental concept in conservative theory.
The third challenge focuses on institutional design. If virtue and liberty connect through different mechanisms in various contexts, how can we develop institutions that foster both simultaneously? While state enforcement of virtue is often counterproductive, pure voluntarism is insufficient. Voluntary institutions frequently lack the power or authority to nurture moral character. A practical solution may involve carefully limited interventions that enhance moral agency while maintaining essential freedoms.
These challenges aren’t merely theoretical; they influence how conservatives must approach pressing policy questions. Consider social media regulation: The causation puzzle impacts whether platforms should prioritize early user freedom (Meyer’s approach) or first establish strong community standards (Kirk’s view). The definition problem shows that different conceptions of liberty lead to varying conclusions about platform governance. Additionally, the institutional-design challenge raises questions about whether algorithmic content promotion can cultivate genuine virtue or if more direct intervention is necessary.
Addressing these puzzles is urgent as National Conservatives prepare to reshape American politics through state power. Vance’s conservatism prioritizes virtue over liberty, claiming that government can actively shape moral character. Fusionists need a more thoughtful explanation of how freedom and virtue interact in specific areas such as technology regulation and family formation.
To answer these challenges, fusionists must study how different types of freedom influence moral development in specific contexts. Social scientists could examine how platform-governance models affect user behavior and community formation or analyze how various education-policy approaches balance individual choice with character development. This research would generate testable hypotheses that can draw in young conservative researchers.
The future of fusionist governance relies on strengthening these theoretical foundations and developing inventive practical applications. While fusionist thought once influenced the leadership of the Republican Party, its impact has been diminished owing to its inability to tackle specific policy challenges. Reviving fusionism requires applying modern analytic tools to questions about how liberty and virtue interact.
