The Man Who Invented Conservatism: The Unlikely Life of Frank Meyer

Frank Meyer was the man who more than any other was responsible for the shape -- the intellectual contours -- of the modern conservative movement. His approach was called fusionism, by which he intended that conservatives should fuse their two rooted and irrepressible impulses, the one a love for tradition and the other a hunger for personal liberty. Meyer came to fusionism at the end of a long and twisted road. After the Hitler-Stalin pact and credible reports of horrific conditions inside the Soviets' workers' paradise, Meyer made an anguishing transition to an ex-Communist life, where he began to thrive. If an ideological tussle broke out anywhere on the right, or the near-right, or even the conceivably-right, Frank Meyer could routinely be found in the middle of it. He took up the job of building out a national political movement and coalition to "get to 51," which was the central objective, indeed the obsession of Meyer's life: the piecing together of an electoral majority for fusionist conservativism. Daniel Flynn is the best-informed source on all matters Meyer and traces his presence at the creation of so many institutions that made up the skeletal frame of the conservative movement, to which he lent his lasting political DNA.