This book review was written by Eugene Kernes
“What is emerging victorious, in
other words, is not so much liberal practice, as the liberal idea. That is to say, for a very large part of the
world, there is now no ideology with pretensions to universality that is in a
position to challenge liberal democracy, and no universal principle of
legitimacy other than the sovereignty of the people. Monarchism in its various forms had been
largely defeated by the beginning of this century. Fascism and communism, liberal democracy’s
main competitor’s up till now, have both discredited themselves.” – Francis
Fukuyama, Chapter 4: The Worldwide Liberal Revolution, Page 61
“The persistence of war and military competition among
nations is thus, paradoxically, a great unifier of nations. Even as war leads to their destruction, it
forces states to accept modern technological civilization and the social
structures that support it. Modern
natural science forces itself on man, whether he cares for it or not: most
nations do not have the option of rejecting the technological rationalism of
modernity if they want to preserve their national autonomy.” – Francis Fukuyama,
Chapter 6: The Mechanism of Desire, Page 92
“For Hegel, freedom was not just a psychological phenomenon,
but the essence of what was distinctively human. In this sense, freedom and nature are
diametrically opposed. Freedom does not
mean the freedom to live in nature or according to nature; rather, freedom
begins only where nature ends. Human
freedom emerges only when man is able to transcend his natural, animal
existence, and to create a new self for himself. The emblematic starting point for this
process of self-creation is the struggle to the death for pure prestige.” – Francis
Fukuyama, Chapter 13: In the Beginning a Battle to the Death for Pure Prestige,
Page 172
Is This An Overview?
Liberal democracy has overcome competitors and has become
the source of legitimate governance. Rather
than people threatened to be part of a state, people want to be part of
democratic states. Democracy is the
pinnacle of ideologic evolution, and the final form of government. Ideals of liberal democracy cannot be
improved upon. Previous forms of
government led to decisions that caused their collapse. To preserve autonomy, states are forced to
develop technologies and social structures that validate democratic values.
Leaders of democratic states can be pressured to behave and
respond to the values of their citizens.
Causing democracy to provide people with needed recognition and
justice. Democratic states do have
social problems, but those problems are not flaws within a democracy. Dictatorships do not need to consider what
their people think. What prevents democracy
from becoming universal, are cultural values.
People can be habituated to inferior forms of governance.
Caveats?
Competition prevents sustained hegemony. Becoming the pinnacle is a retrospective, for
previous forms of government could have made that case that those values were
the pinnacle. Democracies have their own
contradictions. An afterword
acknowledges that democratic governments do not necessarily behave as
democracies should.
