“We all kinda secretly at some level wanna use power against our enemies.” — Stephanie Slade
Earlier this week, Silicon Valley heretic Paulina Borsook railed against libertarianism. Today, the libertarians get their turn. Stephanie Slade is a senior editor at Reason and the author of Fusionism in which she lays out a contemporary path for American conservatism.
For Slade, libertarianism is captured by that New York City intersection where Church Street meets Liberty Street. “Fusionism” = Hayek + Aquinas. It marries the classical liberal defense of individual freedom to the Judeo-Christian tradition of moral virtue. And it’s a polemic against what she calls “will-to-power” conservatism of America-first statists like JD Vance and Tucker Carlson. These are Slade’s enemies. The real threat to the future of American conservatism.
Slade might be politically homeless but is hardly a moderate. She is radically committed to limited government, a pro-life Catholic and, in her words, a “free market girl.” Ronald Reagan championed trickle-down economics. Stephanie Slade fuses that with trickle-down morality. Sladeian rather than Borsookian.
Five Takeaways
• Church & Liberty Street. Fusionism: classical liberalism married to Judeo-Christian virtue — Hayek plus Aquinas. Not sectarian: the irreligious Hayek qualifies, and “Keynes could be a virtuous person.”
• Economic Liberty Is Individual Liberty. Crony capitalism gets no defense. Culture wars: persuade, don’t coerce — with abortion the rights-based exception. Pluralist, not rationalist, liberalism.
• Will-to-Power Conservatism. The target: “politics is war, and the only question is who’s gonna acquire and wield state power against their enemies.” Trump practices it; Vance theorizes it; Carlson preaches it.
• What Trump Voters Actually Believe. The EPPC poll: scattered on economics, ninety percent united on cultural siege. Trumpism is cultural, not economic. And the Heritage man: “We’re conservatives. That means we believe in freedom.”
• Trickle-Down Morality. Klein wants efficient government to do more; she wants less. Techno-optimist on AI — but “you have to build democratic legitimacy.” Reagan had trickle-down economics; Slade has trickle-down morality.
About Keen On America
Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen.
Website: https://keenon.tv/ Substack: https://keenon.substack.com/ YouTube: https://youtube.com/@KeenOnShow
Buy Fusionism: bookshop.org
Chapters:
00:00:31 Introduction: after Borsook, the libertarian’s turn
00:02:12 What is libertarianism? A fusionist’s definition
00:03:15 Living in the belly of the beast
00:03:53 Always a minority: Reagan’s rhetoric vs Reagan’s record
00:05:32 Anarcho-capitalists: the Andreessen strain
00:06:30 Church & Liberty Street: a Catholic in a secular movement
00:07:43 Buckley: conservatism’s father, not libertarianism’s
00:09:33 Was Buckley virtuous? The Vidal question
00:12:31 What is virtue? Flourishing and the moral order
00:14:13 From Aristotle to Aquinas — without the dogma
00:16:16 Hayek and Keynes: a virtuous friendship
00:17:59 Economic liberty is individual liberty
00:20:05 Culture wars without coercion — and the abortion exception
00:23:06 Fusionism vs Mill: two kinds of liberalism
00:25:42 Disagreeing with popes: a free-speech absolutist
00:26:46 A conservative family dispute
00:28:30 The politics of victimhood, left and right
00:30:30 Trump: “all of the above”
00:31:37 Vance, Carlson, and will-to-power conservatism
00:32:11 The siege mentality as permission slip
00:36:06 Politically homeless, radically committed
00:38:17 DOGE: zero faith
00:39:41 Reason’s reach: 50,000 in print, 5 million online
00:40:26 The Heritage anecdote: “we believe in freedom”
00:41:42 What Trump voters actually believe: the EPPC poll
00:43:46 Dunkelman, Klein, and the abundance overlap
00:46:18 High-speed rail and the New Deal
00:49:16 AI, data centers, and democratic legitimacy
00:52:39 No AI wrote this book
00:52:45 Cruz, Rubio, and the fusionists driven out
00:54:36 Trickle-down morality