Meyer, Frank S. (1909–1972)

Frank Straus Meyer was a writer, a founding editor of National Review, and an advocate of “fusionism”—a political theory uniting libertarianism with strands of modern conservatism that shaped the American political right during the cold war.

Born in Newark, New Jersey, Meyer attended Princeton University before transferring to Balliol College, Oxford, where he earned a B.A. in 1932. He then attended the London School of Economics and was elected president of the students' union, an office for which he campaigned as a communist. Expelled from England on account of his political activities, Meyer returned to the United States and settled in Chicago, where he met and later married another avowed communist, Elsie Brown.

Meyer and his wife grew increasingly disenchanted with the political beliefs he had embraced ...