“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.
