A man in the arena

Remember fusionism? No, no, not cold fusion. That was the energy reaction that created no heat and no energy for that matter. Fusionism was the marrying of libertarian and conservative ideas in the 1950s. It was the underlying philosophy behind modern conservatism. And by “was” I mean to say that it is dead.

The key to fusionism was that conservatism realized that government social policies were mostly counterproductive. Ergo a libertarian freedom protecting government would allow communities to freely flourish in a spontaneous order kind of way.

The whole thing just went the way of the Titanic. To say federal welfare policies are too huge, bureaucratic, and destructive to local government and that they should be ended is something the conservative and the libertarian could agree on. To say the federal government should fund faith-based government social policies is to lose both the libertarians and those conservatives that remember that thing about bureaucracies not working very well. To spend well beyond what is taxed is to create a vastly bigger government then the people are paying for. Once again you have lost those libertarians and conservatives with a memory.

So where do you go if you believe the government is really too big? Where do you go if you understand the necessity of government power and also understand the threat of government hegemony?

I don’t know the answers. And that worries me.

# posted by D. W. Eifert @ 7:19 AM