Libertarians argue that the freedom to design one's own children genetically -- not just to clone them, but to give them more intelligence or better looks -- should be seen as no more than a technological extension of the personal autonomy we already enjoy.
This is hardly a position specific to libertarians. Most people, except those who have chosen to reject modern technology generally, believe that it is right and proper to use available dietary, medical, etc. techniques to give their children the best available situation.
By this view, the problem with the eugenics practiced by Nazi Germany was not its effort to select genetic qualities per se, but rather the fact that it was done by the state and enforced coercively.
The phrase "by this view" implies that opposition to coercion and totalitarianism is just another point of view having no more validity than that of the coercers and totalitarians. If Fukuyama advocates this sort of extreme moral relativism, he should say so up front -- but of course a moral relativist feels no particular need to be honest when there is an advantage in being deceitful.
To begin with, the community of interest that is presumed to exist between parents and children cannot be taken for granted, which is after all why we have laws against child abuse, incest etc.
The existing guidelines (parental autonomy in general, with specific exceptions for clear and present evidence of child abuse) are no more and no less applicable to the use of genetic engineering than they are to the use of any other tool.
Libertarian advocates of genetic choice want the freedom to improve their children. But do we really know what it means to improve a child?
Well, yes, we do, and we don't need the government to figure out that strength is better than weakness, that resistance to disease is better than chronic sickliness, and -- to take an example that is particularly applicable to Fukuyama's typing excersize -- that intelligence is better than stupidity.
Parents, of course, try to improve their children in all sorts of ways today, through education, resources and upbringing. But the genetic stamp is indelible, and would be handed down not just to one's children but to all of one's subsequent descendants.
Here, Fukuyama makes an obviously nonsensical non-distinction. The plain fact is that all of the factors cited here are passed down to subsequent descendants. An educated, prosperous, and civilized child will raise educated, prosperous, and civilized grandchildren in turn, and so on down the line. Ditto for ignorant, poor, and barbaric children.
ROTFLMAO! Great.
EBUCK