Atlas / Comparisons / Apartheid Nationalism vs American Fusionist Conservatism
Apartheid Nationalism and American Fusionist Conservatism
Measured distance across six axes
Opposed programmes with little shared ground. No axis places them within three points of each other. They diverge by eight points or more on EC, AU, SC, CH.
Axis by axis
| Axis | National Party | Buckley, Meyer | Gap | Reading | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| EC · Economic organisation | 00 | +08 | 8 | Diverges | Carries the disagreement. Any claim that these two are alike has to explain this. |
| CU · Social and cultural order | +10 | +06 | 4 | Differs | Real difference, but not the dividing line. |
| AU · Organisation of power | +07 | −04 | 11 | Diverges | Carries the disagreement. Any claim that these two are alike has to explain this. |
| SC · Scale of decision | +07 | −04 | 11 | Diverges | Carries the disagreement. Any claim that these two are alike has to explain this. |
| ID · Rule of membership | +10 | +03 | 7 | Differs | Real difference, but not the dividing line. |
| CH · Method and tempo | +02 | −06 | 8 | Diverges | Carries the disagreement. Any claim that these two are alike has to explain this. |
Each axis runs from −10 to +10; the distance is the straight-line separation across all six at once, out of a maximum of 49.0. How the scoring works →
The evidence behind the widest gaps
A distance figure is worth nothing unless the scores behind it can be checked. These are the artefacts supporting the axes that separate these two most.
National Party · EC 00
Coded at the centre, which surprises people in both directions: extensive state ownership and racially reserved employment inside a capitalist economy.
- Documented act or statuteState corporations dominated steel, electricity, transport, oil and armaments.
- Documented act or statuteJob reservation statutes reserved skilled categories for white workers until the 1980s.
Buckley, Meyer · EC +08
Coded +8: free markets treated as morally rather than merely technically superior.
- Programme textFrank Meyer's In Defense of Freedom argues liberty is the political precondition of virtue.
National Party · AU +07
Coded +7 rather than at the ceiling: a genuinely competitive parliament existed for the enfranchised minority.
- Documented act or statuteElections were contested and the governing party faced real parliamentary opposition throughout.
- Documented act or statuteStates of emergency from 1985 permitted detention without trial and press censorship for the majority.
Buckley, Meyer · AU −04
Coded −4: constitutional originalism and limited federal power.
- Documented act or statuteThe Federalist Society, founded 1982, made originalism the movement's judicial method.
What this comparison does not establish
Proximity means similarity of stated position. It carries no claim about competence, circumstance, scale of operation, or what either organisation actually did to the people under it. Two organisations can sit close together and produce entirely different histories, because those things are not on any axis and could not be.
Apartheid Nationalism
1948–1994 · South Africa
Permanent legal separation of racial groups with political rights reserved to one of them.
American Fusionist Conservatism
1955–2000 · United States
Free markets, traditional morality and anti-communism fused into one movement; liberty as the political means to a virtuous end.
Distance is not the whole answer. Two organisations can sit the same distance apart for entirely different reasons, and the reason is the content of any claim about them. Open the comparison in the atlas to weight the axes yourself.
Open in the atlas