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Know Your Enemy

Frank Meyer, Inventor of Conservatism (w/ Daniel J. Flynn)

Matt and Sam interview Dan Flynn about his extraordinary new biography of Communist-turned-National Review-editor Frank Meyer.
Duration
1h 45m
Broadcast on
28 Aug 2025
Audio Format
other

Devoted Know Your Enemy listeners will recall that, in November 2021, we released a fairly dense, theory-driven episode on Frank Meyer, the Communist from New Jersey whose exploits on behalf of the Party in the UK got him kicked out of the country and back to the United States, where he eventually turned right and became a key figure in the post-war U.S. conservative movement, both as an editor at National Review and an architect of institutions like the American Conservative Union, Young Americans for Freedom, and the Conservative Party of New York. Of course, we had more to say about Meyer, and we're devoting another episode to him, this time focused on the details of his incredible life, thanks to the publication of an extraordinary new biography of Meyer, Daniel J. Flynn's The Man Who Invented Conservatism: The Unlikely Life of Frank S. Meyer. Flynn discovered a trove of never-before-seen papers of Meyer's that range from personal documents (tax returns, Christmas cards from Joan Didion, his dance card from college) to his correspondence with nearly every conservative writer and intellectual of note in the 1950s and 60s. Armed with these files, Flynn offers a vivid portrait of a brilliant, eccentric political life and mind.

Listen again: "Frank Meyer: Father of Fusionism" (November 10, 2021)

Sources:

Daniel J. Flynn, The Man Who Invented Conservatism: The Unlikely Life of Frank S. Meyer (2025)

Frank S. Meyer, In Defense of Freedom: A Conservative Credo (Regnery, 1962)

F.A. Hayek, "Why I am Not a Conservative," from The Constitution of Liberty: The Definitive Edition (2011)

George H. Nash, The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945 (Basic Books, 1976)

Garry Wills, Confessions of a Conservative (Doubleday, 1979)

"Against the Dead Consensus," First Things, March 21, 2019

...and don't forget to subscribe on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!

Alright, welcome listeners to episode 119 of Know Your Enemy. I'm Matt Sitman, your podcast co-host, and I'm here as always with my great friend Sam at the Bell. Hey, Sam. Hi, Matt. Well, this one's a barn burner, so we're not going to tear you with too long of an introduction. It's almost as long as our Buckley episode, and that's fitting because it's about Frank S. Meyer, a close colleague of Buckley's friend, early senior editor at National Review, very importantly, manned the back of the magazine, all the book reviews. So why have we returned to Frank Meyer, Sam? I don't know. Because there was this wonderful book that just came out, a biography of Frank S. Meyer by Daniel J. Flynn, and we had the author himself on the episode to talk about the life and times of Frank S. Meyer. Yes, Dan Flynn, he's a senior editor with the American Spectator. He's authored a number of previous books, often having to do with the right, published in Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, City Journal. So Dan is a conservative. He was a ostensible enemy, but in this case, it's kind of the best kind because he's clearly a sicko for the kind of obsessive, you know, tracking and researching of mid-century conservative intellectuals that we are. So in that sense, the best of enemies will say. Yes. And really, it's a hell of a story. Like, Dan is a great storyteller. I think you'll enjoy just listening to him talk about Frank, as he calls him, which I found lovely. And we just wanted to mention too that about four years ago now, we did do an episode on Frank Meyer, just me and Sam. So if you want to go back and listen to that, feel free. It is the case, and I think Sam would agree with this, that in the episode that was just me and Sam, there's more on the theory of fusionism, the kind of, you know, theory that Frank Meyer offered that married freedom and tradition. And this is much more biographically driven in some ways, just because of the incredible details, details we did not know the first time around. And I was thinking, Sam, before we hopped on to record this introduction, that it's a little like reading Christopher Isherwood's Berlin stories, and then reading his later memoir, Christopher and His Kind, where Christopher's Kind has all the sex and gay stuff that he kind of censored or wrote about obliquely or changed names and genders for. This is that version, the one with all the colorful details, his sex life, his romantic life, his adventures, just the insanity of this life. It's wild and so fascinating and gripping. Totally, yes. For listening to you, having heard the old episode, if you want to get me and Matt going deep on, you know, the sort of theoretical and philosophical debates about conservatism and fusionism from the early pages of Nash Review, go back to that episode. For those of you who want to hear a list of everybody that Frank Meyer owed money to or had sex with, listen to this. No, there's plenty of interesting conservative argument in this episode too, but it's just a real thrill. And I think listeners will enjoy it. Yes. Shall we get some housekeeping items, Sam? Yeah. As always, we're grateful to our partners at Descent. One thing they do for us by sponsoring the podcast is if you subscribe to know your enemy on our Patreon at patreon.com/knowyourenemy. For $10 a month or more, you get access to all of our bonus episodes, plus a free digital subscription to Descent, plus you get access to our Discord. And of course, if you want to subscribe for $5 a month, you can do so. And you'll have access to all of our bonus episodes, of which there will continue to be many. And just as a little note on our bonus episodes, we just put out from behind the paywall, a conversation I had with Talia Lavin about her fantastic book, Wild Faith on the Christian Rite, kind of in the Trump era. And that's another kind of episode we do behind the paywall sometimes, not just punditry, but sometimes Sam and I will have read a particular book that we just want to talk to that writer. This was a case of that. So you can listen to that for free. And if you like it, there's more like that behind the paywall. We have a good one, we're recording tomorrow. Yes, yes. I won't give it away. As always, we also want to thank Jesse Bradiman, our intrepid producer, as well as Will Epstein, who does the music for the podcast. Especially thank you to Jesse for wrangling this one. And thank you Dan Flynn for being incredibly generous with his time. We talked to him for a few hours, and this was the result. So thank you, Dan. Thank you, Jesse. Thank you, Will. Thank you, Sam. Thank you, Matt. Enjoy

Transcription truncated.

Matt and Sam interview Dan Flynn about his extraordinary new biography of Communist-turned-National Review-editor Frank Meyer.