|
dde97a3
|
While classical liberalism sought to protect the autonomy of equal individuals, the new ideology of multiculturalism promoted equal respect for cultures, even if those cultures abridged the autonomy of the individuals who participated in them.
|
|
|
Francis Fukuyama |
|
388bec2
|
The psychological dislocation engendered by the transition from Gemeinschaft to Gesellschaft laid the basis for an ideology of nationalism based on an intense nostalgia for an imagined past of strong community in which the divisions and confusions of a pluralist modern society did not exist.
|
|
|
Francis Fukuyama |
|
49fd390
|
Marxists basically like to think that the spirit of history or human consciousness made a terrible boob. The awakening message was intended for classes, but by some terrible postal error was delivered to nations.
|
|
|
Francis Fukuyama |
|
ae54f4c
|
it diverts attention from older and larger groups whose serious problems have been ignored. A significant part of the white American working class has been dragged into an underclass, comparable to the experience of African-Americans during the 1970s and '80s. Yet one has heard little concern from activists on the left, at least until recently, about the burgeoning opioid crisis, or the fate of children growing up in impoverished single-par..
|
|
|
Francis Fukuyama |
|
2352fb1
|
The traditional Christian understanding of the inner self saw it as the site of original sin: we are full of evil desires that lead us to contravene God's law; external social rules, set by the Universal Church, lead us to suppress these desires.
|
|
|
Francis Fukuyama |
|
27daa30
|
The politics of recognition and dignity had reached a fork by the early nineteenth century. One fork led to the universal recognition of individual rights, and thence to liberal societies that sought to provide citizens with an ever-expanding scope of individual autonomy. The other fork led to assertions of collective identity, of which the two major manifestations were nationalism and politicized religion.
|
|
|
Francis Fukuyama |
|
ab7fdf7
|
But the impact of national identity on state strength is not limited to its coercive power. Much of what passes for corruption is not simply a matter of greed but rather the by-product of legislators or public officials who feel more obligated to family, tribe, region, or ethnic group than to the national community and therefore divert money in that direction.
|
|
|
Francis Fukuyama |
|
1632c91
|
Clientelism is an efficient form of political mobilization in societies with low levels of income and education, and is therefore best understood as an early form of democracy.
|
|
|
Francis Fukuyama |
|
0ae6e14
|
The principle of effective government is meritocracy; the principle of democracy is popular participation. These two principles can be made to work together, but there is always an underlying tension between them.
|
|
|
Francis Fukuyama |
|
c706937
|
Americans can be proud of this very substantive identity; it is based on belief in the common political principles of constitutionalism, the rule of law, democratic accountability, and the principle that "all men are created equal" (now interpreted to include all women). These political ideas come directly out of the Enlightenment and are the only possible basis for unifying a modern liberal democracy that has become de facto multicultural"
|
|
|
Francis Fukuyama |
|
1cad8e5
|
The type of identity politics increasingly practiced on both the left and the right is deeply problematic because it returns to understandings of identity based on fixed characteristics such as race, ethnicity, and religion, which had earlier been defeated at great cost.
|
|
|
Francis Fukuyama |
|
fd393f6
|
diversity cannot be the basis for identity in and of itself; it is like saying that our identity is to have no identity; or rather, that we should get used to our having nothing in common and emphasize our narrow ethnic or racial identities instead.
|
|
|
Francis Fukuyama |
|
2cc105c
|
The shift in agendas of both left and right toward the protection of ever narrower group identities ultimately threatens the possibility of communication and collective action.
|
|
|
Francis Fukuyama |
|
7fb3d05
|
The remedy is to define larger and more integrative national identities that take account of the de facto diversity of existing liberal democratic societies.
|
|
|
Francis Fukuyama |
|
b35b54c
|
Many modern democratic constitutions thus enshrine the principle of equal dignity. They are drawing on the Christian tradition that sees dignity rooted in human moral agency. But that agency is no longer seen in a religious sense, as the ability to accept God; rather, it is the ability to share in the exercise of power as a member of a democratic political community.
|
|
|
Francis Fukuyama |
|
4c1e42d
|
Fin de siecle Vienna was a melting pot that had produced Gustav Mahler, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, and Sigmund Freud. But when the empire's narrower national identities--Serbs, Bulgarians, Czechs, and Austro-Germans--asserted themselves, the region descended into a paroxysm of violence and intolerance.
|
|
|
Francis Fukuyama |
|
19a0728
|
The problem, however, was not with the idea of national identity itself; the problem was the narrow, ethnically based, intolerant, aggressive, and deeply illiberal form that national identity took.
|
|
|
Francis Fukuyama |
|
cc4bc83
|
But the simple availability of information about corruption tends not to produce genuine accountability because the politically active part of the population are members of clientelistic networks.
|
|
|
Francis Fukuyama |
|
b751bf7
|
Christian freedom was an inner condition of the spirit, and not an external condition of the body.
|
|
|
Francis Fukuyama |
|
ca272ba
|
This is the meaning of state autonomy: a government that is responsive to interest groups but not owned by them, that is not too easily swayed by the short-term vagaries of democratic public opinion but rather looks to long-term public interest.
|
|
|
Francis Fukuyama |
|
dd5f612
|
At the time of the ratification of the U.S. Constitution in 1788, only white males with property had full political rights; the circle of rights bearers gradually expanded to include white men without property, African-Americans, indigenous people, and women.
|
|
|
Francis Fukuyama |
|
87fba24
|
Successful state building is dependent, therefore, on the prior existence of a sense of national identity that serves as a locus of loyalty to the state itself, rather than to the social groups underlying it.
|
|
|
Francis Fukuyama |
|
58ac947
|
As some observers pointed out at the time, the stability of modern Western Europe was built on ethnic cleansings that had taken place in earlier historical periods, which modern Europeans had conveniently
|
|
|
Francis Fukuyama |
|
9e6f751
|
Latin America has been characterized by a "birth defect" of inequality from which it has not yet recovered."
|
|
|
Francis Fukuyama |
|
a3eb334
|
The proponents of identity politics on the left would argue that assertions of identity on the right are illegitimate and cannot be placed on the same moral plane as those of minorities, women, and other marginalized groups. Rather, they reflect the perspectives of a dominant mainstream culture that has been historically privileged and continues to be so. These arguments have obvious truth. Perceptions on the part of conservatives of advant..
|
|
|
Francis Fukuyama |
|
a72a454
|
no man is a good judge in his own case.
|
|
|
Francis Fukuyama |