In a 1796 letter to a friend, French naval officer Charles Louis Etienne said of the exiled Bourbons, “They have learned nothing and forgotten nothing.” For Freedom Conservatives, the phrase—often attributed to Talleyrand—should give pause. 

For the Bourbons, the French Revolution seemed like an unjust interruption of their rightful place atop the French throne, one which they would eventually end and resume their rule. In the same way, for Freedom Conservatives, it is tempting to think that the years since the rise of Donald J. Trump, Catholic integralism, Christian nationalism, and National Conservatism are merely an interruption of the old fusionist place defining the American Right. The Bourbons came to ruin soon after their restoration. Freedom Conservatives cannot allow the same fate to befall them. 

Fusionism rested on the cooperation of social conservatives, foreign policy hawks, and libertarian economists to balance appeals to freedom and virtue while confronting an imperial Soviet Union. Social conservatives wanted to defend against the excesses of the sexual revolution. Hawks wanted an aggressive posture in confronting the Soviet Union. Libertarian economists wanted deregulation, low income taxes, and right to work. Ronald Reagan delivered on all of these except, perhaps, for the social conservatives. At the time, the consensus made sense and achieved its objectives.

With the defeat of the Soviet Union, fusionism began to unravel. The process accelerated during the George W. Bush presidency. The 9/11 terrorist attacks on American soil seemed to provide a substitute for communism in radical Islam, but the response to 9/11 was misguided. Rather than a narrow policy of rooting out Al-Qaeda terror cells, the George W. Bush administration invaded and occupied Afghanistan and, soon after, Iraq. In the meantime, Bush and Congress worked out a surveillance regime, and defended “enhanced interrogation techniques,” but struggled to make the case for them during the second administration. From 2005 until 2008, the Bush administration endured the humiliation of Hurricane Katrina, multiple human rights abuses in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, a near disaster in his nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, and the failure of the Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill. In his final year in office, Bush oversaw the Troubled Asset Relief Program to address the rapid unraveling of the housing market and, with it, the American and (eventually) global economies. This last issue was especially difficult for libertarian economists to square with their own ideas and the broader fusionist coalition.

With two terms under Barack Obama, conservatives saw a dramatically diminished Republican Party fail to prevent the passage of the Recovery Act and Affordable Care Act. Fusionists seemed powerless to stop him. When the 2010 midterms returned Republicans to a congressional majority, they campaigned hard against Obama’s domestic gains while defending a questionable policy of continuing to station soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan without a clear mission. It is hard for some to remember, but the mood in 2012 was jubilant. Fusionists were back! Conservatives genuinely thought that the Republican ticket of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan was sure to win on a campaign preserving the forward position abroad and austerity at home. To his credit, Romney understood the threat in Russia, but any vigilance against China was hard to find, especially since so much of American industry depended on the labor arbitrage of off-shoring less skilled work. The sound defeat of the 2012 GOP ticket was followed up with the Obergefell decision, the “pen and phone” executive order liberalizing immigration, the pullout from Iraq, and the Iran deal. 

By the 2016 elections, fusionism was dead. Gone was the threat of radical Islam as a unifying force. Social conservatives had seen their efforts to defend traditional marriage vaporized, while business interests had been bailed out. These interests also seemed to secure the immigration and off-shoring advantages they wanted. The declining fortunes of working-class men changed their political interests away from preserving personal independence to seeking revenge or entitlements. The 2016 campaigns rooted in 1980s fusionism no longer spoke to ordinary Americans, and the Trump candidacy, for all of its excesses, seemed like the kind of change that these ordinary citizens had hoped Obama would have brought but did not. 

Trump’s presidency is thin on achievements, beyond breaking the Iran deal, reversing the “dear colleague” letters to universities, some tax reform, and some critical Supreme Court appointments. The long-promised “repeal and replace” of Obamacare never came, while Trump pulled us out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership vital to isolating China. The Biden administration has achieved even less besides a disastrous pull-out from Afghanistan, dithering support for Ukraine, and the introduction of left-wing social engineering in the educational system. Both are to blame for COVID policies from which some parts of the country have still not recovered. 

No matter whether they controlled the presidency, whether they had congressional majorities, or both, conservatives have proven unable to govern effectively. Fusionism rested on a consensus concerning a set of policy solutions for problems that had long passed—high income tax rates, communism, and wage and price controls. Attempts to refashion those conditions with, for example, replacing communism with radical Islam only delayed the reckoning the GOP experienced in the 2016 election.

For Freedom Conservatism to succeed, freedom conservatives must relearn how to govern. Governing will require them to identify who their constituents are, what institutions they wish to conserve or build, and what policies achieve the ends enunciated in the Statement of Principles. The constituents are likely not the fusionist ones of old. If conservatives want to win, they need to listen to African Americans, Hispanics, and other ethnic and religious minorities without dictating to them the terms of debate. They must then build institutions that foster these communities and integrate them into a broader milieu of freedom conservatism and provide them opportunities to advocate for policies they favor. These policies cannot rely on freedom principles alone but on meeting the interests of these communities. The place to start this process will be by restoring the priority of self-government, wherein citizens of local communities have greater control over local institutions than state and federal governments. 

The key institution Freedom Conservatives must reform is the political party. Parties have been hollowed out of their original function of negotiating interests, nominating capable candidates, and hammering out compromises in legislation. None of this happens anymore except in emergencies. The donor-driven Super PAC world of elections simply cannot integrate citizens into politics, leaving them subject to the appeals of demagogues on the campaign trail and in the media. Without functioning political parties, the Freedom Conservative principles will remain confined to a manifesto, instead of becoming the foundation for a renewed American republic.

As for policies, the starting point is restoring the material conditions for a free life. As wrong as many National Conservative policies are, they are at least right that citizens today have a real desire for bold leadership, just not of the Viktor Orbán kind. To restore the material conditions for a free life, America needs major changes to housing policy. Freedom Conservatives should push against zoning laws and the manipulation of environmental regulations, while developing long-term housing solutions for the homeless. It is also critically important to address the root cause of foreign drug imports and the failure of psychiatric care reforms of the 1970s. 

It may seem odd to start with these policies, but to be free, one must first achieve a level of financial independence, such as can be secured in home equity. By freezing the housing supply, not only are incumbent owners hoarding wealth, they are hoarding economic independence, thereby preventing challenges to their incumbent status. Once again, ordinary citizens are the ones most exposed to this harm, while wealthier Americans can insulate themselves in better-policed or even gated communities. 

To conclude, I want to say, as one of the original singers of the Freedom Conservatism Statement of Principles, that I bring this criticism out of a desire for freedom conservatism to succeed. Since the 1990s, conservatives have lived in fear of governing by their own principles. Now it is time we live up to them instead.