Posted on 12/30/2017 3:34:50 AM PST by GonzoII
Populists and autocrats were victorious around the world in 2017. For answers we turned to the American political economist Francis Fukuyama, who once thought it was all over.It’s all too easy to throw around terms like “historic” or “radical break.” Such rhetoric often only serves to camouflage a lack of real analysis. But for once, the year 2017 genuinely felt like a historic moment, as the world began to change faster than it has in several decades.
When Donald Trump bellowed “America First!” in his inauguration speech, it all started to seem real. Previously, many observers had convinced themselves that Mr. Trump would be transformed by the office. Now it’s become clear that the president wasn’t joking: He fully intends to up-end the liberal world order, established by the United States after the end of World War II in 1945. Authoritarianism seems to be on the rise across the globe, with strongmen consolidating their hold, led in Europe by Vladimir Putin in Moscow, Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara, and a wave of anti-democratic changes in Eastern Europe. The year 2017 seemed to mark the rise of closed societies instead of open ones, of rule over the people rather than rule of the people.
Who better to analyse this than Francis Fukuyama, the American historian whose book “the End of History” coined that phrase? Though this became a post-Cold War cliché, his idea survived: That liberal democracy was the only game in town, its challengers consigned to the trashcan of history. Now, suddenly, that idea seems both outmoded and hubristic. That’s something Mr. Fukuyama himself recognizes. “We are witnessing a period in which democracy is being threatened in way I have not experienced in my lifetime,” he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at global.handelsblatt.com ...
“Authoritarianism seems to be on the rise across the globe, ”
No, it’s sovereignty that’s awakening, dear ignorant can commie writers.
So many upside down points in this article, it’s funny. Sadly funny. Mid-1900’s liberalism came from Marxism, in the United States it came heavily from Frankfurt School immigrants from...Germany. And again, USA is and always has been a REPUBLIC, not a democracy (thank God!).
Go Trump! MAGA!
“It is happening around the world in spite of 8 years of Obamaunism and the EUSSR.”
It is happening around the world BECAUSE of 8 years of Obamaunism and the EUSSR.
Our founders created the US the way the did because they lived through the experience of life under a king.
Me too - Trump never bellows. He is incredibly soft spoken. The power in what he says is in his words.
Who better to analyse this than Francis Fukuyama, the American historian whose book “the End of History” coined that phrase? Though this became a post-Cold War cliché, his idea survived: That liberal democracy was the only game in town, its challengers consigned to the trashcan of history. Now, suddenly, that idea seems both outmoded and hubristic. That’s something Mr. Fukuyama himself recognizes. “We are witnessing a period in which democracy is being threatened in way I have not experienced in my lifetime,” he said.
Let me get this straight: voters electing someone who will listen to them and do their will, act in their interests, is the greatest threat to democracy this "Expert" has ever seen? I think he needs to look to the dictionary to refresh himself on what "democracy" means. Hint: It doesn't mean forcing voters to subvert themselves to the will of some global consensus or sacrifice their own desires for those of some cadre of elites who "know better". That's something else.
I agree.
They change the story, but never the underlying plot. It's always about redistribution.
If they attain elected power this bodes well for freedom across the Western Hemisphere.
It isn't democracy being threatened. It is the undemocratic, cynical and corrupt liberal bureaucratic structures that are being threatened, and for damned good reason.
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