The American Mind: Charles Kesler- Interviewing Francis Fukuyama: The Final Form of Human Government

Source:The American Mind- Author Francis Fukuyama, on The American Mind 

Source:The New Democrat

At risk of sounding insulting, wasn’t Frank Fukuyama a Neoconservative 10-15 years ago and one of the big backers of the Iraq War? I liked his first line about “democracy will only survive if the people want democracy.” I just wish he believed and wrote about that during and before the Iraq War. And now I’ll get off that because we’ve all taken positions before that we now disagree with and even regret. And saw new evidence and perhaps old evidence that we didn’t see before and saw that we were wrong and changed course appropriately.

If the Communists can have their own vision of government and governmental system and call it communism, than so can Liberals especially Liberal Democrats and we can call our vision of government and governmental system liberalism. Because that is what this is about which is liberal democracy and not just the right to vote and the majority generally rules. And generally rules is key because unlike social democracy the majority in liberal democracies don’t always get their way. Just ask U.S. Senate Leader Mitch McConnell when it comes to appropriations bills that Congress has to pass.

Liberal democracy is yes of course the right to vote and majority tends to win, but where there’s also minority rights. So strong majorities can’t vote away our individual rights and protections. Like the right to vote to use as an example, Freedom of Speech and Assembly, Right to Privacy, Right to Self-Defense, all our personal and economic freedoms that most Americans love having. Liberal democracy is not simply about the right to vote. It is really about the right to be free with a responsible limited government tasked to doing the basic services that we all need. And to protect our rights and freedoms.

Frank Fukuyama wasn’t talking about voting. He was talking about liberal democracy in general where yes of course we have the right to vote. But where we have broad set of individual rights with a responsive, but responsible government that is limited to doing the things that we need it to do. But not run our lives for us, but protect our ability to run our own lives under Rule of Law. Which is are things that Neoconservatives and Social Democrats simply don’t understand. That both put order and equality over individual freedom for people to manage their own lives.
The American Mind: Charles Kesler- Interviewing Francis Fukuyama: The Final Form of Human Government