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6e1f2b4
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By taking on political correctness so frontally, Trump has played a critical role in moving the focus of identity politics from the left, where it was born, to the right, where it is now taking root. Identity politics on the left tended to legitimate only certain identities while ignoring or denigrating others, such as European (i.e., white) ethnicity, Christian religiosity, rural residence, belief in traditional family values, and related ..
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Francis Fukuyama |
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c1bfd61
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Dual citizenship has become increasingly widespread today as migration levels have increased. For many people who travel or have family in different countries, having multiple passports is a great convenience. But if one takes national identity seriously, it is a rather questionable practice. Different nations have different identities and different interests that can engender potentially conflicting allegiances. The most obvious problem in..
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Francis Fukuyama |
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c182515
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Social democracy, one of the dominant forces shaping Western European politics in the two generations following World War II, has been in retreat.
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Francis Fukuyama |
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08ecb44
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Left-wing populism made a strong showing primarily in parts of Latin America in the 1990s and 2000s, with the rise of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in Brazil, and the Kirchners in Argentina. But this wave has already retreated, with the self-immolation of Venezuela under Chavez's successor, Nicolas Maduro. The strong showings of Jeremy Corbyn in the United Kingdom and Bernie Sanders in the United States may be harbinge..
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Francis Fukuyama |
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cfd7b40
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Verily, men gave themselves their good and evil. Verily, they did not take it, they did not find it, nor did it come to them as a voice from heaven. Only man placed values in things to preserve himself--he alone created a meaning for things, a human meaning. Therefore he calls himself "man," which means: the esteemer. To esteem is to create: hear this, you creators! Esteeming itself is of all esteemed things the most estimable treasure. Thr..
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Francis Fukuyama |
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a4a22e7
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The rule of law limits power by granting citizens certain basic rights--that is, in certain domains such as speech, association, property, and religious belief the state may not restrict individual choice. Rule of law also serves the principle of equality by applying those rules equally to all citizens, including those who hold the highest political offices within the system. Democratic accountability in turn seeks to give all adult citizen..
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Francis Fukuyama |
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93cd5e7
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In both Europe and the United States, that debate is currently polarized between a right that seeks to cut off immigration altogether and would like to send current immigrants back to their countries of origin and a left that asserts a virtually unlimited obligation on the part of liberal democracies to accept migrants. The real focus should instead be on strategies for better assimilating immigrants to a country's creedal identity. Well-as..
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Francis Fukuyama |
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bec83b7
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Religion was instead seen as a form of idolatry or false consciousness; recognition was due rather to the expressive inner self that might at times even want to transgress religious rules.
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Francis Fukuyama |
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fc193c0
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Philip Rieff, who argued that the decline of a shared moral horizon defined by religion had left a huge void that was being filled by psychologists preaching a new religion of psychotherapy.
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Francis Fukuyama |
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6b37232
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Modern liberal societies are heirs to the moral confusion left by the disappearance of a shared religious horizon.
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Francis Fukuyama |
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ad644cc
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Who am I, really?" The search for an answer produces feelings of alienation and anxiety and can only be relieved when one accepts that inner self and receives public recognition for it."
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identity-politics
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Francis Fukuyama |
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c54c750
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The problem with this understanding of autonomy is that shared values serve the important function of making social life possible.
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Francis Fukuyama |
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1aec9a3
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But what if Rousseau was wrong and that inner self was, as traditional moralists believed, the seat of asocial or harmful impulses, indeed of evil?
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Francis Fukuyama |
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ce3abda
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the promotion of self-esteem enabled not human potential but a crippling narcissism, indeed, a narcissism that he felt had come to characterize American society as a whole.
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Francis Fukuyama |
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0356990
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The therapeutic turn in the popular culture of advanced liberal democracies such as the United States was inevitably reflected in its politics, and in an evolving understanding of the role of the state.
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Francis Fukuyama |
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4ebbd58
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When an American thinks about the problem of government-building, he directs himself not to the creation of authority and the accumulation of power but rather the limitation of authority and the division of power.
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Francis Fukuyama |
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05d943f
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The obligation to respect universal human rights has been voluntarily undertaken by most countries around the world, and rightly so. But all liberal democracies are built on top of states, whose jurisdiction is limited by their territorial reach. No state can undertake an unlimited obligation to protect people outside its jurisdiction, and whether the world would be better off if they all tried to do so is not clear.
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Francis Fukuyama |
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696dc0c
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In the second decade of the twenty-first century, that spectrum appears to be giving way in many regions to one defined by identity. The left has focused less on broad economic equality and more on promoting the interests of a wide variety of groups perceived as being marginalized--blacks, immigrants, women, Hispanics, the LGBT community, refugees, and the like. The right, meanwhile, is redefining itself as patriots who seek to protect trad..
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identity-politics
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Francis Fukuyama |
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a21ce80
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But as important as material self-interest is, human beings are motivated by other things as well, motives that better explain the disparate events of the present. This might be called the politics of resentment. In a wide variety of cases, a political leader has mobilized followers around the perception that the group's dignity had been affronted, disparaged, or otherwise disregarded. This resentment engenders demands for public recognitio..
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identity-politics
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Francis Fukuyama |
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aed9360
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Liberal democracy is built around the rights given to individuals who are equal in their freedom, that is, who have an equal degree of choice and agency in determining their collective political lives.
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Francis Fukuyama |
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2c9c0d2
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The most modern contemporary bureaucracies were those established by authoritarian states in their pursuit of national security.
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Francis Fukuyama |
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923c819
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the left stopped thinking several decades ago about ambitious social policies that might help remedy the underlying conditions of the poor. It was easier to talk about respect and dignity than to come up with potentially costly plans that would concretely reduce inequality.
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Francis Fukuyama |
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38fc015
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Sequencing therefore matters enormously. Those countries in which democracy preceded modern state building have had much greater problems achieving high-quality governance than those that inherited modern states from absolutist times.
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Francis Fukuyama |
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f7bf430
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Kojeve, interpreting Hegel in the 1930s, suggested that the idea of the modern state, once unleashed in the world, would eventually universalize itself because it was so powerful: those facing it would either conform to its dictates or be swallowed up.
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Francis Fukuyama |
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8e58970
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the experience of a more democratic America suggests that there is an inherent tension between democracy and what we now call "good governance." --
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Francis Fukuyama |
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51a1191
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I want that Tesla not because I care so much about global warming, but because it is trendy and expensive, and my neighbor is still driving a BMW.
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Francis Fukuyama |
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77f6832
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The English race, consequently, has long and successfully studied the art of curbing executive power to the constant neglect of the art of perfecting executive methods. It has exercised itself much more in controlling than in energizing government. It has been more concerned to render government just and moderate than to make it facile, well-ordered and effective.
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Francis Fukuyama |
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9d6048a
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The left continued to be defined by its passion for equality, but that agenda shifted from its earlier emphasis on the conditions of the working class to the often psychological demands of an ever-widening circle of marginalized groups.
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Francis Fukuyama |
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e31c860
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Natural sociability can be overridden by the development of new institutions that provide incentives for other types of behavior (for example, favoring a qualified stranger over a genetic relative), but it constitutes a form of social relationship to which humans always revert when such alternative institutions break down.
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Francis Fukuyama |
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702a4a8
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This new middle-class elite sought reforms against the interests of a political class that had succeeded in mobilizing the vast mass of nonelite voters into the patronage system.
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Francis Fukuyama |
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9e78540
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Thus Luther is responsible for the notion, central to questions of identity, that the inner self is deep and possesses many layers that can be exposed only through private introspection.
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Francis Fukuyama |
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de4f447
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What Rousseau asserts, and what becomes foundational in world politics in the subsequent centuries, is that a thing called society exists outside the individual, a mass of rules, relationships, injunctions, and customs that is itself the chief obstacle to the realization of human potential, and hence of human happiness.
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Francis Fukuyama |
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661d91b
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the Islamicization of radicalism--that is, a process that draws from the same alienation that drove earlier generations of extremists, whether nationalists such as Paul de Lagarde or Communists such as Leon Trotsky.
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Francis Fukuyama |
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69ff339
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Lant Pritchett, Michael Woolcock, and Matt Andrews have argued that one of the big problems with developing countries' governments is that they engage in what they term "isomorphic mimicry," that is, copying the outward forms of developed countries' governments, while being unable to reproduce the kinds of outputs, like education and health, that the latter achieve."
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Francis Fukuyama |
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8f36692
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On the right, plenty of new white nationalist voices would like to drag the country backward to an identity once again based on race, ethnicity, or religion. It is urgent that
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Francis Fukuyama |
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47f4cac
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On the left, identity politics has sought to undermine the legitimacy of the American national story by emphasizing victimization, insinuating in some cases that racism, gender discrimination, and other forms of systematic exclusion are somehow intrinsic to the country's DNA.
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Francis Fukuyama |
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847d033
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To deceive the state, strangers, or even associates is accepted, and often applauded as evidence of cleverness.
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Francis Fukuyama |
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62e7b82
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On the other hand, countries that democratized early, before they established modern administrations, found themselves developing clientelistic public sectors.
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Francis Fukuyama |
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4822d31
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War, as we saw in Volume 1, creates incentives for efficient, meritocratic government that ordinary economic activity does not and therefore is one important path to state modernity.
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Francis Fukuyama |
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025930b
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Thymos is the part of the soul that craves recognition of dignity; isothymia is the demand to be respected on an equal basis with other people; while megalothymia is the desire to be recognized as superior.
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Francis Fukuyama |
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e0c1e50
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The left has focused less on broad economic equality and more on promoting the interests of a wide variety of groups perceived as being marginalized--blacks, immigrants, women, Hispanics, the LGBT community, refugees, and the like. The right, meanwhile, is redefining itself as patriots who seek to protect traditional national identity, an identity that is often explicitly connected to race, ethnicity, or religion.
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Francis Fukuyama |
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0e44e4e
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Many of the failures attributed to democracy are in fact failures of state administrations that are unable to deliver on the promises made by newly elected democratic politicians to voters who want not just their political rights but good government as well.
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Francis Fukuyama |
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e3b7768
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This might be called the politics of resentment. In a wide variety of cases, a political leader has mobilized followers around the perception that the group's dignity had been affronted, disparaged, or otherwise disregarded. This resentment engenders demands for public recognition of the dignity of the group in question. A humiliated group seeking restitution of its dignity carries far more emotional weight than people simply pursuing their..
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Francis Fukuyama |
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d7e6c51
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Greece thus became one of Europe's first electoral democracies, preceding Britain by a full generation. As in the United States, democracy was established before an indigenous modern state could be created.
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Francis Fukuyama |