Strengthening Constitutional Self-Government

No Left Turns

Goldberg on Fukuyama

Jonah Goldberg has a nice long review of FF’s recent book here. A snippet:

Francis Fukuyama, the author of The End of History, is a man constitutionally determined to find the permanent theory of everything. It seems, however, that America at the Crossroads represents less a serious theoretical exegesis than a momentary crisis of confidence by one of the smartest observers around. It is a snapshot taken at a moment of maximum neo-conservative despair stemming from confusion over the Iraq war and the nature of the Islamist threat. In a Huntington age, he is unwilling to relinquish the vision of a Fukuyama world. As such, this book offers useful insights into the internal contradictions within and among conservative policymakers, but ultimately it creates more bloomin’ buzzin’ confusion than it dispels.

Read the whole thing.
 

For what it’s worth, my own half-baked thoughts on the book are here.

Discussions - 3 Comments

Fukuyama lost his nerve. And he was rattled by the fevered criticism of the war, and the ENDLESS doom and gloom coverage in the mainstream media. I bet the guy never checked out any of the military blogs. You get a better sense of which way the war is going, and a better feel for the problems in Iraq over at Strategypage.com than from anything that Professor Fukuyama has to offer.

It’s difficult to formulate coherent strategy when you’re constantly looking over your shoulder to see if the upper west side approves or not. Jihadist islam has existed for 1,300 hundred plus years. Did Fukuyama really believe we were going to find a way to get beyond jihad without having to demonstrate some grit, some staying power, some seriousness of purpose?

Why do people still pay attention to him? His thesis in The End of History was spectacularly wrong. Spectacularly wrong. What do you have to do to lose your pundit status?

Well, I thought his end of history thesis was simply an attempt to be provocative. I never really thought he was truly in earnest.

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