[1] He was the author of eight books, including Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America's Enemies (2007).
[11] Evans became a proponent of National Review co-editor Frank Meyer's "fusionism", a political philosophy reconciling the traditionalist and libertarian tendencies of the conservative movement.
[12] He argued that freedom and virtue are not antagonistic, but complementary: The idea that there is some sort of huge conflict between religious values and liberty is a misstatement of the whole problem.
[13] The conservative believes that ours is a God-centered, and therefore an ordered, universe; that man's purpose is to shape his life to the patterns of order proceeding from the Divine center of life; and that, in seeking this objective, man is hampered by a fallible intellect and vagrant will.
Properly construed, this view is not only compatible with a due regard for human freedom, but demands it.
[25] He was one of the first conservatives to denounce U.S. President Richard M. Nixon, just a year into his first term, co-writing a January 1970 ACU report condemning his record.[why?]
Under Evans' leadership, the ACU issued a July 1971 statement concluding, "the American Conservative Union has resolved to suspend our support of the Administration."
"[26] In June 1975, the ACU called upon Ronald Reagan of California to challenge incumbent Gerald R. Ford Jr., for the 1976 Republican presidential nomination.
He was the president of the Philadelphia Society,[30] a member of the Council for National Policy, sat on the advisory board of Young Americans for Freedom, and was a trustee of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI).
[40] Troy University's Hall School of Journalism hosts an annual M. Stanton Evans symposium named in his honor.