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Thread: No Alternatives to Liberalism

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    No Alternatives to Liberalism

    No Alternatives to Liberalism is a review of Fukuyama's latest Liberalism and Its Discontents..

    Fukuyama is the one who proclaimed, if you recall, the end of history in global acceptance of democratic capitalism.

    The world, at least parts of it, in Europe, and elsewhere, even to some degree the US--see National Conservatism, has been turning away from it.

    This then is a review of Fukuyama's response.

    At a time when populists on the right and progressives on the left seem increasingly willing to abandon liberalism, Francis Fukuyama has offered a welcome defense in Liberalism and Its Discontents. The kind of liberalism he defends is “classical”; and his argument is that liberalism’s fiercest critics have uniformly missed the mark in focusing their ire not on classical liberal doctrines per se, but on the way “certain sound liberal ideas have been interpreted and pushed to extremes.”...\

    Fukuyama follows John Gray in defining liberalism in terms of four broad characteristics. It is individualist in asserting the moral primacy of the person over the collective, egalitarian in affording the same legal and political status to all citizens, universalist in viewing all human beings as possessing the same moral dignity, and meliorist in affirming the improvability of all social and political arrangements.

    Fukuyama’s thesis about sound doctrines being pushed to extremes applies to the left and the right in modern liberal regimes. His critique of the right...certain 20th-century economists and politicians under their sway transformed a valid set of liberal ideas about individual autonomy and private property into something like an anti-state religion: they came to worship free markets, deregulation, and privatization; they touted personal responsibility as a cure-all for dependency on the state; and they viewed “consumer welfare” as the ultimate criterion of social health.

    ...But his argument is not so much that their thinking was wrong, as that it was sometimes exaggerated and crudely applied....

    ...The problem of pushing sound liberal insights too far is not limited to the right: it also occurs on the left. Fukuyama criticizes the left’s tendency to overvalue autonomy in the form of “self-actualization” and the “elevation of choice over all other human goods.” He refers to this as the “sovereign self.” More often, it is referred to as expressive individualism, a “yearning for fulfillment through the definition and articulation of one’s own identity,” as Yuval Levin writes. For Fukuyama, the ultimate result of this tendency is a profound meaninglessness: “an autonomous self that has been detached from all prior loyalties and commitments,” a person “wholly without character, without moral depth.” Fukuyama points out that the road is short from such meaninglessness to the phenomenon of identity politics, where meaning is found in diverse groups seeking political recognition.

    Fukuyama’s critique of the left also includes a quick survey of “critical theory” and a highly compressed rebuttal....

    ...But Fukuyama does not think that conservative critics have any reasonable alternatives to liberalism....

    ...Fukuyama is similarly doubtful that any credible alternatives to liberalism will come from the left....
    Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire. ― Gustav Mahler

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    Fukuyama follows John Gray in defining liberalism in terms of four broad characteristics. It is individualist in asserting the moral primacy of the person over the collective, egalitarian in affording the same legal and political status to all citizens, universalist in viewing all human beings as possessing the same moral dignity, and meliorist in affirming the improvability of all social and political arrangements.

    Compare with current conformist Progressives and an insane obsession with (collective) Identity Politics and forming group alliances against perceived enemies.

    Feminists must embrace gender confusion or be Cancel Cultured, ect....
    My Revenge will be Success! - Donald J Trump

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    Quote Originally Posted by RMNIXON View Post
    Compare with current conformist Progressives and an insane obsession with (collective) Identity Politics and forming group alliances against perceived enemies.

    Feminists must embrace gender confusion or be Cancel Cultured, ect....
    Fukuyama does address Identity Politics, Woke, Critical Theory to some degree.

    But his seems to mainly be a criticism of the right for changing under Trump. It has changed. National Conservatism, which I posted the other day, looks at some of the changes.
    Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire. ― Gustav Mahler

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    As Clarence Thomas's grandfather said "Some things that don't seem to make sense actually just don't make sense"
    Devotion to the truth is the hallmark of morality; there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of a man who assumes the responsibility of thinking.”
    Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

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    The analysis of his critic is worthless.

    But like many of us conservatives, Fukuyama has evolved in his conservatism. So you can pick a point in time and find contradiction with the present.

    Find me a person in any room that has not evolved in their politics.

    The one irritant that I have in the criticism is Populism is not Conservatism.
    Conservatism is not looking for personal nor corporate support.

    Populists of the past were looking for big government to support them financially with the promise of votes. The most famous being the farmers who became populists looking for government support and willing to sell their vote. That makes them Democrats of today not Conservatives.
    Let's go Brandon !!!

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    Quote Originally Posted by Chris View Post
    Fukuyama does address Identity Politics, Woke, Critical Theory to some degree.

    But his seems to mainly be a criticism of the right for changing under Trump. It has changed. National Conservatism, which I posted the other day, looks at some of the changes.
    The right did not change under Trump. Trumps' policies were Tea Party based.

    It changed under the Tea Party movement and was suppressed. Trump just adopted the Tea Party Principles.
    The Tea Party was a total rejection of George Bush, neoconservatives and the Christian right who overlapped heavily with the neoconservatives. That was despite the fact the most Tea Party members were Christians.

    Neoconservatives fail to understand how they almost completely destroyed the GOP forever.
    Let's go Brandon !!!

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    There is one alternative to liberalism.

    Intelligence
    I'm yo.
    This my brother yo
    We yo yo

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    Quote Originally Posted by Chris View Post
    Fukuyama does address Identity Politics, Woke, Critical Theory to some degree.

    But his seems to mainly be a criticism of the right for changing under Trump. It has changed. National Conservatism, which I posted the other day, looks at some of the changes.


    Weak opposition based on taxes, regulation, and foreign policy is not solid Conservatism IMHO.......

    We will lose all of Western Civilization and Culture along with every benefit of the last Century and more with that attitude!
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    Quote Originally Posted by carolina73 View Post
    The analysis of his critic is worthless.

    But like many of us conservatives, Fukuyama has evolved in his conservatism. So you can pick a point in time and find contradiction with the present.

    Find me a person in any room that has not evolved in their politics.

    The one irritant that I have in the criticism is Populism is not Conservatism.
    Conservatism is not looking for personal nor corporate support.

    Populists of the past were looking for big government to support them financially with the promise of votes. The most famous being the farmers who became populists looking for government support and willing to sell their vote. That makes them Democrats of today not Conservatives.
    Fukuyama's always been a neocon interested in spreading democracy. I think this new book is a defense of his earlier end-of-history prediction.
    Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire. ― Gustav Mahler

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    Quote Originally Posted by carolina73 View Post
    The right did not change under Trump. Trumps' policies were Tea Party based.

    It changed under the Tea Party movement and was suppressed. Trump just adopted the Tea Party Principles.
    The Tea Party was a total rejection of George Bush, neoconservatives and the Christian right who overlapped heavily with the neoconservatives. That was despite the fact the most Tea Party members were Christians.

    Neoconservatives fail to understand how they almost completely destroyed the GOP forever.

    I'd agree, conservatism had already changed under Tea Partiers, Trump wasn't a leader but a follower, with much credit to Bannon.
    Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire. ― Gustav Mahler

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