Acton Line

In this episode, we are bringing you a conversation with Stephanie Slade, the managing editor of Reason Magazine, and Eric Kohn, the director of communications here at Acton. In this episode they discuss the philosophy of fusionism.    Slade writes that Fusionism is the marriage of two value sets: liberty & virtue. “Liberty - in the classical sense of freedom from aggression, coercion, and fraud; and virtue - in the Judeo-Christian sense of submission to God's commands.” In this unifying value set, we can see fusionism as a “distinct philosophical orientation unto itself.”   Rather than a tug of war between two philosophies which we see played out today, fusionism introduces the idea that liberty and virtue should have never been separated. With Fusionism, we see this unbreakable bond between these two philosophies. Thus people can freely choose to live out their individual rights and freely live out the teachings of Christianity.   The founding fathers believed that virtue and liberty were, according to Slad