The Man Who Invented Conservatism 

At first, The Man Who Invented Conservatism might seem like a rather grandiose title for a biography of Frank S. Meyer, a man who is unfamiliar to many young conservatives today. He died eight years before Ronald Reagan was elected president, and never lived to see the fall of the Berlin Wall or witness other achievements of modern conservatism. Nonetheless, conservatives will find his biography fittingly titled.  

As biographer Daniel Flynn demonstrates in his book, subtitled The Unlikely Life of Frank S. Meyer, Meyer was indeed an architect, if not the architect, of the modern conservative movement. Meyer’s 1962 book of essays, In Defense of Freedom, helped define modern conservative political thought, and his involvement with various conservative organizations laid the groundwork for some very important conservative political and policy victories.  

Flynn also uncovers a number of fascinating details about Meyer’s life and the people he knew and worked with. For instance, as a student at the London School of Economics, Meyer dated Sheila MacDonald, the daughter of British prime minister Ramsay MacDonald. He was also a neighbor in Woodstock, New York, of singer-songwriter Bob Dylan. And, somehow, Meyer was able to get author and Star Trek scriptwriter Theodore Sturgeon to review science fiction books for National Review. Though Sturgeon had little sympathy for Meyer’s political views, they shared a passion for science fiction.  

More importantly, though, Flynn chronicles Meyer’s intellectual journey from left to right. Like many twentieth-century conservative intellectuals, Meyer was a Communist as a young man. In 1933, Meyer was expelled from the London School of Economics and deported from Great Britain because of his involvement with the Communist Party. He then enrolled in an anthropology graduate program at the University of Chicago. However, in 1938 he withdrew, and the administration refused to allow him to re-register because of his poor academic performance. In the thirteen years after Meyer graduated from high school, he had attended six different institutions and obtained just one degree. 

Nonetheless, Meyer continued to teach and organize for the Communist Party. However, he began to have misgivings about Communism, particularly when the party opportunistically changed its position about the Soviet Union allying with Nazi Germany during World War II. Also, Meyer’s experience in the army was central to the formation of his political judgment. During basic training in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1942, Meyer served with men from a diverse range of socioeconomic backgrounds. Since Meyer was from a wealthy family and had attended elite institutions, the military gave him his first exposure to working-class men. Meyer discovered that average Americans in the military were not the proletariat that Communists described. Men serving in the military against foreign enemies had little interest in class warfare. After reading Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, Meyer made a complete break from the Communist Party in 1945. 

Meyer eventually moved his family into a home in the mountains of Woodstock, New York, in part because he feared retaliation from his onetime Communist comrades. Indeed, Meyer received national attention when he testified against Communist Party leaders at the Smith Act trial in 1947. Unable to find a full-time university faculty position, Meyer earned a modest living by public speaking and writing. His writings appeared in such publications as The Freeman and The American Mercury before he eventually found an outlet in National Review. He was listed on the masthead of National Review’s first issue, published in November 1955. He wrote a popular column titled “Principles and Heresies” and became National Review’s books editor in 1957, a position he held until his death. 

Flynn emphasizes that at this time, Meyer did his most important intellectual work for the conservative movement. Starting in the mid-1950s, he received grants from the Volker Fund to write a book about the philosophical underpinnings of conservatism. His most well known work, In Defense of Freedom, published in 1962, was the result. In this book, Meyer emphasized personal liberty but also advocated conserving domestic institutions. This was an ethos based on the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and The Federalist. It was here that Meyer introduced the important concept of fusionism. He argued that Americans find freedom in their tradition. If tradition is preserved, so is freedom. Thus, fusionism could bring both traditionalists and libertarians together. This powerful insight continues to inform conservative political thought today. 

In Defense of Freedom did not sell particularly well in its time. When the Regnery edition went out of print in 1970, it had hardly sold more than three thousand copies. However, in terms of influence, the book was a smashing success. In Defense of Freedom became part of a canon of about a dozen books that conservative intellectuals read to better understand the principles that shape modern conservative political thought. Many who read and reread the book achieved positions of great influence. In fact, in a 1981 speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Ronald Reagan credited Frank Meyer by name for fashioning “a vigorous new synthesis of traditional and libertarian thought—a synthesis that is today recognized by many as modern conservatism.” 

Though Meyer was hoping to unite the conservative movement, personal and ideological conflicts persisted within National Review throughout the 1960s. In particular, Meyer frequently clashed with National Review senior editor James Burnham. This was partly because Meyer emphasized personal freedom, while Burnham prioritized anti-Communism and was more sympathetic to the use of government power. (As a side note, readers interested in modern conservative political thought will enjoy learning about internal debates among National Review editors James Burnham, Willmoore Kendall, Brent Bozell, and Willi Schlamm.)  

Flynn could have expanded on Meyer’s role in these intramural conservative intellectual debates. The key point Flynn makes is that former Communists who became involved with National Review and other conservative publications understandably prioritized anti-Communism in their writing; Meyer, however, prioritized personal freedom, stating the purpose of the political order was to preserve individual liberty. Though he did not consider himself to be a libertarian, Meyer did espouse libertarian positions on various social issues such as abortion and assisted suicide. Flynn could have spent more time analyzing the nuances of Meyer’s ideological views and various internal disagreements among conservative intellectuals.  

That said, Flynn does a fine job explaining Meyer’s role in conservative debates about political strategy. As a former organizer for the Communist Party, Meyer’s practical political experience was unmatched among conservative intellectuals. Unlike many at National Review, Meyer was a long-time supporter of Barry Goldwater. At a 1961 Human Events banquet, Goldwater excluded National Review when asked to name publications he thought were essential to conservatives. Additionally, some at National Review thought Goldwater was a poor standard-bearer for conservatism and would probably lose the presidential election in a landslide. Meyer was nonetheless more optimistic than other conservatives about Goldwater’s chances in 1964.   

But Meyer’s interest in Goldwater’s candidacy was largely strategic. He felt that conservatives needed to take over the Republican Party in order to exert political influence nationally. He saw Goldwater’s nomination as an important first step toward that goal. Even after Goldwater’s landslide loss, Meyer remained optimistic. He thought that a conservative presidential candidate obtaining nearly 40 percent of the popular vote was an accomplishment, considering the media bias that Goldwater faced and the longtime control that liberals exerted over elite institutions. Further, in a 1960 memo to the National Review editorial board, Meyer correctly predicted that “conservatives would elect one of their own to the Presidency within two decades.” 

That said, in the aftermath of Goldwater’s loss, conservatives had to work hard to build the institutions that would support them. Here Meyer excelled. Flynn demonstrates how the lessons Meyer learned as an organizer for the Communist Party helped him in his role as a conservative activist. For instance, he thought the Conservative Party in New York was an important ideological counterweight to the New York Republican Party, which often nominated politically liberal candidates during the 1950s and 1960s. He served as Vice Chairman of the Party and advised James Buckley during his successful Senate run in 1970. He also invested in conservative youth: he was a regular at Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) conferences and often invited young conservatives to his home in Woodstock, New York for long evenings of drinking, discussion, and debate. 

In the days leading up to his death, Meyer, a Jew, became intensely interested in the Catholic faith and the Church’s intellectual tradition. Despite wrestling with a few of the Church’s key teachings, for instance on assisted suicide, Meyer eventually converted to Catholicism. He died in 1972 as a baptized Roman Catholic.  

Young conservatives can learn a great deal from Flynn’s account of Meyer’s life. Two Trump administrations have certainly polarized many on the right; some see Trump’s populism, protectionism, and isolationism as a departure from mainstream conservativism, while others see these policy and ideological positions as legitimate, but somewhat neglected, strains of conservative political thought. Meyer might have disagreed with some of Trump’s specific policy choices. However, one could also see Meyer defending Trump on both practical and ideological grounds. Regardless, Flynn has successfully captured the finer points of Meyer’s life, legacy, and contribution to the broader conservative movement.  

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