With The Man Who Invented Conservatism: The Unlikely Life of Frank S. Meyer, Daniel J. Flynn has produced a biography valuable to both political novices and serious students of the conservative movement.
Laymen will gain from the introduction to Meyer, a once influential but now largely forgotten mid–20th century editor at National Review, and to the "fusionist" philosophy he articulated in his columns and passed on to countless young people who later became leaders of the American right. That philosophy, which combines classical liberalism with traditional religion, is all but synonymous with conservatism as the word (at least until recently) was understood in the United States. "Millions of Americans adopted it as their political creed," Flynn writes, "knowing neither the name Frank Meyer nor the word fusionism."
