Francis Fukayama Redeems Himself

Francis Fukayama may have restored his reputation, at least with me, by writing an article in Newsweek recently in which he was actually right. Fukayama, a professor at Johns Hopkins, is probably best known for writing The End of History, in which he claims that liberal democracy has won and is dominant. He was also an early supporter of George W. Bush’s Iraq invasion, providing intellectual justification from a non-Pentagon neocon that was essential to selling the war.

But Fukayama was so wrong on both counts that I was beginning to think that maybe he taught at Johns Hopkins preschool rather than the University. His Newsweek article, however, is possibly the best summary I’ve seen of where the US has gone wrong over the past several decades. To summarize his summary: the Reagan revolution was about A) lower taxes and less government; and B) supporting liberal democracy worldwide. We’ve gone too far on A, as demonstrated by the current financial crisis, and we’ve ruined B by doing it at gunpoint rather than through persuasion. Rather than adding more commentary, I encourage you to read his article here.