While an undergraduate seeking to understand America’s drift toward collectivism, I was able to meet and become friends with Frank Meyer. The encounter with Meyer occurred at a time when he was developing his theory of conservative “fusionism.” I later realized that fusionism is theoretically deficient, and more an ideological construct rather than a philosophic one, yet it resonated then— and today—with many American conservatives who want conservatism to become a force in American society and politics much like the ideology of liberalism with which they have contended. That construction of conservatism by Frank Meyer is an ideology, a making of abstractions that are imposed on reality rather than a reflection of our conservative folkways. That is not to say that my kind of conservative does not value freedom. I do.

We conservatives believe that community in all its efflorescence takes precedence over the abstract “individual,” and that our commonly shared experience of the common good is the basis of social order, not the individual in the abstract. We do not think that maximizing the freedom of the abstract individual is the goal of society. Freedom of individuals is an abstract value, admirable in the abstract, but necessarily limited by other considerations, such as the freedom of American citizens. Mario Pei, one of the great linguists of the last century, thought that Frank Meyer’s fusionist construction was solipsistic.² By that he meant the only reality that Frank Meyer brought to his speculations was his own willful making of that reality.

Understanding reality requires that we discuss our experience of reality in all its aspects, which includes the material aspects of life, the Presocratics’ insight into the process of the genesis, growth, and death of “existent things” (ta onta), and the discovery that the arche of all this is transcendent reality (to on) which they understood was divine (to theion). This radical break with previous mythic formulations that shaped the culture of ancient Greece shaped the West and contributes even to this day to the uniqueness of how we understand the world and our place in it. The discovery of the soul (psyche) as the locus where transcendence is experienced unleashed the experiential differentiation that separates us from other cultures—and makes the civilization of the West superior.

When I wear my conservative hat here is what I see: we conservatives and our allies the libertarians are threatened by one main adversary to our social order and the precious freedom of American citizens—the administrative state—and we share a sense that the public spaces of our beloved America are being closed, constricted, and our lives deprived of opportunity and of freedoms that previous generations enjoyed.

Let me focus on that by reference to the growth of the administrative state— my experience of the decline of public order today even as the state grows in power—by way of a visit to Robert Nisbet’s The Quest for Community?³ Nisbet wrote The Quest for Community in 1953 and there he reflects upon the growth of the function and reach of the centralized administrative state. “The centralization and bureaucratic regimentation which have always been native to organized warfare are, in the twentieth century, extended to widening areas of social and cultural life. War symbolism and the practical techniques of war administration have come to penetrate more and more of the minor areas of social function and allegiance.”⁴ Beginning with the Civil War that is now construed as a Second Founding that overcame the inequalities of the original Founding, followed by America’s ideologically-driven entry into World War I, then World War II, the Korean War, the Cold War, the War in Vietnam, Desert Storm, and the invasion of Afghanistan and of Iraq and what is called the War on Terror the centralized bureaucratic state by which America is administered is in its primacy.⁵

World War II shaped a generation by giving it a reason to be patriotic, organizing isolated men and women into a cohesive military force, infused them with esprit, and demonstrated how collective action could achieve great deeds. Not only did they return to civilian life accepting what the state can do for them, they lived longer than previous generations and dominated American politics until the defeat of George Herbert Walker Bush by William Jefferson Clinton. This generation has not yet passed from the scene, and they constitute an important cheering section for another war, the wholesale invasion of personal communications, limitations placed on opening new bank accounts, talk of renewal of universal conscription, creation of a national police force that arrogantly protects us from terrorists when we travel, additional passport requirements, and the constant war chants emanating from the White House, the Department of Homeland Security, mass media Talk Radio, and jingoistic essays in supposedly “conservative” publications.

All this suggests that not only is the legal apparatus of the bureaucratic state in very good health but also the spirit that drives its appetite for new freedoms to devour is very much alive.