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September 25, 2025 12 mins
Brian Thomas talks with Daniel Flynn about his book, "The Man Who Invented Conservatism."
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey, seven thirty here. If you have KCD talk station,
very Happy Thursday slash Friday Eve too. I'm happy to
introduce him. If you have Carsey Morning Show. Author Daniel Flynn.
He's also the senior editor of American Spectator Excellent. The
American Spectator, a visiting fellow the Hoover Institution, authored several books,
among them Blue Collar Intellectuals, When the Enlightened and the
Everyman Elevated America, A Conservative History of the American Left,

(00:24):
and Cult City Jim Jones, Harvey Milkin Ten Days That
Shook San Francisco. Yes, I would love to talk about
each and every one of those, but today welcome Daniel
Flynn to talk about your new book, The Man Who
Invented Conservatism, The Unlikely Life of Frank S. Meyer. Welcome
to the Morning Show, sir. It's a pleasure having you on.

Speaker 2 (00:41):
Hey, thank you for having me.

Speaker 1 (00:42):
And thanks for your work that you do with the
American Spectator. I appreciate that. Okay, let's get right out
of the right to the point. Who in the hell
is Frank Meyer? I'm going I was just gonna say,
I just turned sixty. I've been involved in politics my
entire life, Reagan was the first president I was able
to vote for and campaign for, so I kind of
go back. But there is a connection with Frank Meyer

(01:05):
Ronald Reagan apparently, So let's talk about this.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
Yeah, certainly. I mean I was gonna say is when
Meyer was interviewed by Mike Wallace in nineteen sixty one,
Wallace said, listen, I would venture to guess that about
maybe one of a thousand of my viewers know who
Frank Meyer is. That you know, but I'm told that
Barry Goldwater hangs on your political advice, and William F.

(01:29):
Buckley solicit you for editorial advice. So who are you?
And you know? What I would venture to guess is
that in the year since nineteen sixty one, it's certainly
fewer than one in a thousand. But Meyer was someone
who behind the scenes, these people like Goldwater William F.
Buckley were listening to. I think the interesting thing about him,
aside from his work in the conservative movement, this is

(01:51):
a guy who was a Stalinist communist, who's called the
founder of the communist movement in Great Britain in I
five and six files that I have. At the same time,
he was in Great Britain, calling for the violent overthrow
of the government of Ramsey McDonald, who was the Prime
minister over there. He was having a secret affair with
Ramsey McDonald's daughter. I have his youngest daughter. I have

(02:16):
the letters from her saying, hey, meet me at ten Downing.
My father's not home. Now the coast is clear. Come over,
we'll have dinner. So that's the kind of a brash
guy that he was.

Speaker 1 (02:26):
Absolutely was Daniel Is this is happening while he is
embracing this communist philosophy.

Speaker 2 (02:35):
Yeah, he is the Johnny Appleseed of the Communist Party
in Great Britain, and unsurprisingly he is there's movement to
deport him from the country. He becomes a cause for
Eleve in Great Britain, Clement Attlee, you know, the future
Prime minister. He gives a speech on the floor Parliament.
Bertrand Russell the Philosopher signed a petition in his honor.
There is a guy named Michael Strait who was later

(02:56):
the publisher of the New Republic. He remembers marching around
England's chanting free frank Meyer, Free frank Meyer Meyer gets deported.
He later works for the guy who erected the Berlin
Wall Walter Obrooks, who is the longest serving dictator of
East Germany, he gets disillusioned with communism, testifies in the
longest most expensive trial in US history, the smith Beck Trial,

(03:18):
sends eleven of his former comrades to jail, and then
in nineteen fifty five he's president at the creation of
National View, and that's kind of a new chapter in
his life where he's you know, he goes from being
the Johnny apple Seed of communism in one country to
be the Johnny apple Seed of conservatism in this country.

Speaker 1 (03:35):
Okay, So was it that prosecution that like, so he
turned his back on they turned his back on his
own movement, or what was the how did you go
from communists to conservative philosopher? I mean, what was the
defining moment in his life? That's like leaving the Democrat
Party to become a Republican and that's no insignificant event,
But this seems to me even larger broader than that.

Speaker 2 (03:56):
Yeah, I think that's why one of the reasons people
are in the book, there's three reasons. One, he tried
to join the army and the communists wouldn't let him.
So during World War Two, he wanted to fight Hitler
because they were telling everyone, go fight Hitler, and he says,
I want to fight Hitler. He said, no, don't do it.
So when he finally joined, he met for the first
time in his life plumbers and brick layers and assembly
line workers, and these were not the proletariat that Marx

(04:19):
had told him about. Right later, he reads a book
called The Road to Serve Him and he gives a
review of it in the communist publication. This is maybe
the first time ever in any communist publication that a
free market thinker like Friedrich Kayak gets a respectful, fair review.
Ostensibly this is a review of The Road to Serve Him. Really,
what it is is a guy cracking up. Basically, a

(04:41):
guy looking at the fourteen years of his political commitments
and saying, gee, it was all a lie. And then
you have something you know them. He realized that communists
were sort of going in a Bellicoast direction after the
Second World War. He thought that was crazy to have
a Cold War because they just had this war that
killed fifty million people worldwide. Why are you going to
have more conflict? And he leaves. The Communist Party has

(05:04):
about a five year retreat and re emerges as a conservative.

Speaker 1 (05:08):
How about that, Well, there's hope for all the leftists
out there in the world. Perhaps we can pray for
that is And that's one of the reasons I guess
you wrote the book The Man Who Invented Conservatism, The
Unlikely Life of Frank S. Meyer. Now we also are introduced,
and I am sorry I have to admit to this.
Perhaps like only one in a thousand or maybe even
fewer know who Frank A. S Meyer was. But fusionism, Yeah, fusionism.

Speaker 2 (05:32):
So you know, fusionism was so popular, it was so
influential that most of the people who adopted it as
sort of the default philosophy of the American right, they
never even heard the term fusions and they never heard
of Frank Meyer. But that was the default philosophy, from
say Barry Goldwater all through Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan was
sort of the embodiment of Frank Meyer's dreams, and in

(05:54):
nineteen sixty he predicted Reagan as president. He told Nation Review,
we should never, under any circumstances endorse this guy, this
opportunist Richard Nixon. We may have to wait twenty years
to elect one of our own and that's, of course,
what happened fhusiasm essentially is the marriage of two seemingly
disparate ideas, traditionalism and libertarianism. So you have the freedom

(06:17):
and you also have the sort of the virtue, the
sort of the religious concerns the traditionalists on the other side.
What Meyer said was that these two ideas weren't in conflict,
they were in cooperation. They are that you take away
all this tradition of Western civilization, you take away our heritage.
Then you know the freedom that rests upon that is
going to disappear too. You take away freedom, and you

(06:40):
have compulsory virtue, which isn't virtue at all, which is
sort of wrote virtue. And so Meyer thought those two
things went together, and a lot of Americans believe that.
And it worked because it was true. It worked because
it was simple. But I think most importantly, it worked
because it had political utility in a way a lot
of the other sert philosophies didn't. In other words, it

(07:02):
brought these two different groups together and said, you know,
we've got to work together. They did, and it seemed
to work for you know, over the course of thirty
forty years.

Speaker 1 (07:11):
Well, and that pretty much sums me up, sir. I
am a traditional conservative, but I also i'm quite the
I always refer to myself as a Little L libertarian
as opposed to the Capital L Party libertarian. I disagree
with some of the tenets of the Capital L, but
I'm a freedom loving guy, and I understand this country
is the only country we truly enjoy the freedoms and
liberties that nobody else in the world enjoys. So I'm

(07:31):
happy to play with others nicely in the tent and
can accept them for who they are. But certainly traditional
conservatism involving moral and social order that is extremely important.
We see what's happening with the lack of moral and
social disorder in this country. But also Fusionism also included
an element of anti communism, did it not, Well, yeah, I.

Speaker 2 (07:51):
Mean Frank was anti communist par excellence. I mean he
was a guy that went in and joined the Communist
Party with a guy named Prince Murski, who a few
years later winds up in a gulag Frank has you know,
his protege is Charles Darwin's great grandson. A few years
later he's dead. In the Spanish Civil War, he worked for,
as I said earlier, Walter Ulbrichs, who was the longest

(08:12):
serving dictator of East Germany and who erects the Berlin Wall. Later,
they worked on peace activism together at a time when
Ulbrit's had already ordered murders. So, in other words, Frank
had seen the very ugly side of communism and he
wanted to stop it.

Speaker 1 (08:30):
Quick question for you today, Daniel Flynn, author of this book,
this great book, the man who had been in conservatives.
I've always observed and at least set out loud, the
fall of the Soviet Union, while a victory for United
States and democracy generally, however you want to characterize it,
is the moment in time when the United States lost
its bearing. We had this moral compass. It was always
the Soviet Union, you know, the breadlines, the misery the

(08:52):
folks lived in, the lack of freedoms and liberties, the
stark contrast what we had here we no longer have.

Speaker 2 (08:57):
That.

Speaker 1 (08:57):
We ignored China and its abuse, not even a traditionally
communist country, and I guess nor was Soviet Union. But
without that constant, you know, cold War drumbeat of look
at how bad it is under that system, of government
compared to ours. You kind of felt better about our
system in spite of the fact that it comes with
some flaws. Disappearing in the Soviet Union, I think we

(09:19):
no longer have that. Young people aren't taught about the
ills and the evils of communism and living under that
that that system of government. So now it's become in
vogue almost these days.

Speaker 2 (09:30):
Yes, strangely, I mean that was the unifying force for
the American right when it was gone. The right corner
sort of like a top that sort of spins in
a a real, uh, you know, undisciplined direction. That's that's
what happened to the American right. I think the other
thing that happened is exactly what you said that you know,
for all those years we were reminded about how evil
socialism was, and once the Soviet Union fell, a new

(09:54):
generation of people quit, you know, quickly forgot about how
evil was. And I you know, I look at Paul.
I think probably communism is more popular here than it
is in Russia, and that if you told someone that
in nineteen eighty nine that that's what the future would
be like, they would laugh at you.

Speaker 1 (10:09):
Just like they would laugh out any politician who actually
proudly hung the Moniker Socialist on their political leanings. You
know that you didn't say that out loud back in
the day, in spite of the fact that may have
been how you actually perceived politics. Great conversation the Man
who invented Conservatism The Unlikely Life of Frank S. Meyer
by my guest today, Daniel Flynn. Thank you so much
for the time you spent with my listeners and me

(10:30):
to day. I made it really easy for them all
to get a copy of your book. It's on my
blog page at fifty five carsee dot com cern and
I'll encourage them to get a copy and learn outstanding.

Speaker 2 (10:39):
Thank you so much, real.

Speaker 1 (10:40):
It's been a genuine pleasure, Daniel really has. It's seven
forty one right now. If you have ke see the
talk station. The phone lines will be open. As soon
as Sean hits that little button. You can feel free
to call. I'd love to hear from you. We've got
some time between now and the top of the hour,
and then we'll have some time between the top of
the hour and of course Jay Ratliffe showing up at
eight thirty for the I Heard Media Aviation Extra report

(11:01):
first though, let me mention my friends at Gate of
Heaven Cemetery. You know, these troubled times, it's an ideal
thing to maybe reflect and think about the beauty and
the awesome reality of life, life from birth to death
and everything in between. The sanctity of life is really
truly what is embraced at Gate of Heaven Catholic Cemetery.
They've been serving the since a Christian community for about

(11:21):
seventy seven years, and they invite you to enjoy the peaceful,
beautiful maintain grounds of the cemetery. It's tranquiled landscape surroundings
which are ideal for prayer, reflection, remembrance, honoring life through
its milestones, every milestone, and then reflect. Also, I think
it's important on the brevity of life because it might
make you appreciate the moment you're living right now. That's

(11:44):
what it's all about. To learn more about the pre
planning options service, details upcoming events, and maybe more just
about the whole concept of Gate of Heaven Cemetery, it's easy.
Just go to Gateofhaven dot org. Gateof Heaven dot org
fifty five KRC. The tox date results for working fans

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