Posted on 10/17/2006 2:39:56 PM PDT by sergey1973
KYIV, October 13, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- Professor Francis Fukuyama is best known for his idea that the world settled on liberal democracy after the ideological struggle of the Cold War. After giving a lecture at the 10th Anniversary of the Economic Education and Research Consortium in Kyiv, he spoke to RFE/RL Ukrainian Service correspondent Marianna Dratch about the unrealistic expectations of the Orange Revolution, the development of civil society in Ukraine, and how his ideas on liberal democracy have been misunderstood and misused.
(Excerpt) Read more at rferl.org ...
fukayumama? sp?
It's not his fault that his mother is Japanese -:)))))
LOL!
Seems that Japan would be a rather strikingly obvious contradiction of that belief, huh...
He's now backtracking. It is clear that the utopia that Clintoon, Fukuyama, Gore, T.L. Friedman and other various and sundry transnational progressives planned as of the early to mid 90s is not to be. The world appears to be returning to a another cycle similar to the one which occurred 1895 - 1945. The death of the nation state has been declared prematurely. Globalism is in its last hurrah for quite a while and various centralizations of power are imminent.
Fukuyama claiming to be Marxist of Liberal Movement shows that modern Liberalism is in complete disarray.
History is the cemetery of utopias.
"Fukuyama" sounds like a Screen Name some Liberal would have! LOL!"
Actually, I wouldn't mind Fukuosama as a name.
Coulda been worse though, something to do with mama. LOL
Sure bet this guy caught hell going through high school with a name like that, and "Francis" to top it all off.
Hey that's tag line material. Good, short and sharp!
Thanks -:))) !
He wants a mulligan
Most certainly history contradicts the professor's assertions. Democracy is almost always imposed, and the so-called Marxist growth of democracy is not feasible in light of the fact that non-democratic governments will always resist democratization to the hilt. His views are idealistic and don't take into account the rigid and forceful nature of oligarchies and autocracies.
If democracies are not imposed from without, they must be imposed from within. The United States revolutionary war was promoted, fought, and won by only a third of the inhabitants of the 13 original colonies. The other two thirds were either ambivalent, or opposed to breaking away from England. And when it came time to set up a government a fair number argued for and wanted to establish a new monarchy, or oligarchy in deference to the system they had just broken away from.
It is however true that the institutions and cultural hooks that support a democracy must be nurtured and supported from within, with growth in confidence and belief in the systems growing over time. But without the initial imposition of democratic institutions from within or without, the necessary environment for the growth of confidence in a democratic government cannot exist.
We've seen where liberal ideas on the growth of democracies have led us, with the collapse of the third world's democratic governments, and the rise of autocratic governments in the third world. The premature termination of colonial rule led directly to the weak democratic institutions that eventually collapsed or gave way to anarchy, thus paving the way for autocratic governments. In the decades following WWII the proper method of decolonization should've been slow and based on constant monitoring of the local governmental institutions for corruption and effectiveness. Beginning with the handing over of local governments, and the slow transition of the national governments to local rule. Instead we had a haphazard, happy go lucky divestiture of territory to inadequately supported, highly corruptible post-colonial governments, which has led to the rise of Islamic radicalism as a substitute for law and order in the lawless regions of Asia and Africa.
We are observing the results of bad, liberal/socialist policies and not the results of the European crusades.
"And I have always been more of a Marxist, in the sense that I believe that democracy comes about as a result of a long-term process of modernization"
So the American colonists were at the end of a "long-term process of modernization"???
Fukuyama is an intellectual who is very smart, but very full of suppositions and unfounded conclusions that often ignore the dictum that correlation is not causation. Just because you chose to describe relationships (most of the people walking across the street before the don't walk sign flashed were wearing brown shoes) does not mean that you have identified the cause (people with brown shoes walk faster). That's the kind of analysis Fukuyama often does.
Japan is the exception, not the rule . . . I believe any modern discussion about the spread of democracy as a governing system is predicated on the assumption that laying waste to a country is not going to be the first step in the process.
True, but there are a few very important points about the U.S. experience that are often overlooked.
1. The United States had a frontier that was largely unsettled and was subject to competing claims from different colonial powers thousands of miles away. As a result, people were far more able to "move away" than they are now.
2. The post-Revolution (and pre-U.S.) period in North America saw a period that was something akin to modern "ethnic cleansing," as British loyalists were basically chased out of their homes and farms and forced to move back to England, to Canada, or out onto the frontier. The United States would have failed in its infancy if George Washington had stood up in the 1780s, suggested that "British tyranny is a religion of peace," and insisted on including hard-core British loyalists in the Continental Congress.
Fukuyama made a rather strong and definitive assertion that brooked no contradictions. I provided one just to burst his bubble. The emperor has no clothes...
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