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Funding cspan2 comes from these Television Companies and more including buckeye broadband. Buckeye broadband along with these Television Companies support cspan2 as a public service. Humankind over the centuries as seen in evolution, we go from hunter gatherers to Agricultural Society to various modern principles after the Industrial Revolution. Theres a process in which social institutions become more complex. They develop certain features. Marks that this process would culminate in a communist utopia and, in fact, most progressive intellectuals from the 150 years after the communist manifesto actually believed in the history communism. My argument was we didnt seem to be going there. Theres a bit before the collapse of the soviet union and the idea was that the getting to be this process of modernization, the most development. People want to live in modern societies but the kind of modern society that we seem to be in the art that was liberal democracy and marketbased capitalism is not socialism. Were getting off this traint of history one stop before were communist and marx said we would getul off. Professor francis fukuyama, you were talking there in 2006 about a 1992 book the end of history and the last man. Did what you say about liberal democracy, doesnt stand up today . Actually that clip was remarkably coherent. Since 2006 i think weve seen a lot of regression in the progress of democracy all over the world. Freedom house that tracks global democracy as noted we had 17 consecutives years of decline f the aggregate amount of democracy. I think the worldoc really looks different in many ways that it did back then. The question that i was trying to raise is that was going to happen at any given decade or shortterm but really this longer arc, and there i think there still an open question as to what kind of destination we are heading to as our societies modernize. Host and again you are referencing your book from 1990 to the end of history in the last man. I liketh to read from your most recent book which came out last year and its called liberalism and its. Quote, i am writing this book in a period when liberalism has faced numerous critiques and challenges, and appears many people as an old and wornout ideology that fails to answer the challenges of the time. Nonetheless, liberalism has survived past challenges and its durability reflects the fact that it as practical, moral, and economic justifications that appeal to many people, especially after they have been exhausted by the violent struggles engendered by alternative political systems. Where would you break the threat to Classical Liberalism today . Guest i think its pretty severe, although maybe not as severe as the ones we endured in the 1930s and 40s when you had stalinism and fascism as active enemies, or even in the 1960s and 70s where you had a lot of coup detats and authoritarian takeovers. But i do think the threat is pretty severe. The Geopolitical Division acted dimension is important so you now have got russia and china which are consolidated authoritarian states, and russia Just Launched an invasion of a neighboringoc democracy, tryingo prove that democracy wouldntoc work in that part of the world, in 2022. And china has been arguing that western democracies in, and some kind of terminal decline. So you got that extra challenge and youve got the internal challenge of populism in the United States, first and foremost, where you have politicians and a Political Movement that really attacks the liberal part of the liberal democracy, the rule of law, doesnt want to concede elections and is interested in the peaceful transfer of power. I would suggest we are in a very difficult phase right now. If we dont fight back against this its going to get worse. Host sticking withns liberalism if discontent, you talk about National Populists on the right and progressives on the left. Whats the definition off each f those terms . Guest i think that the populist nationalism denies the fundamental liberal premise that all human beings are fundamentally equal immoral terms. Theres an inherent Human Dignity that transcends your skin color, your gender, other kinds of attributes that deserve to be protected by a rule of law by giving you rights that the state needs to observe. I think a lot of nationalists would say and said no, thats not good enough, we are not just a generic human beings appear we are hindus or we are hungarians or we are so particular subset of human beings and we have a special status that deserves recognition above that of other people. This is not the first time this has come about liberalism itself got its start in the 17th century after 150 years of continuous warfare in europe between protestants andn catholics over how they would use religion toel define a particular quality work the liberals early liberals said we needed to get beyond that and recognize the fact that regardless of our religious confession, we are human beings and its that characteristic that we need to reserve and we need a system that allows people with diverse views as to the good life, we have living together. And so that is a recurring threat. It was religion in the 17th century. It was nationalism in the 19thy. And early 20th centuries, and so there are these movements that reject that liberal premise and human universality. I think that is really whats attacking liberalism from the right. The threat from the left is a little bit different because i think that many progressives in the United States and other advanced countries believe that liberalism really doesnt serve the innses of social justice in terms of racial equality, gender equality, equality of sexual orientation, this sort of thing, and that they need something faster appear they need a system that is more decisive that will protect the rights of marginalized groups and, therefore, they are willing to discard certain liberal principles of freedom of speech, probably first and foremost. I think between these two threats the one coming from the right is actually much more present. Its backed by a a lot of geopolitical power and by state power in many instances. I do think you see the liberal tendencies on both sides. Host and some of the later you cite in your book identity who are perhaps National Populists include boudin and erdogan, or bond, deter to pick which are put i modi there as well . And possibly a President Trump . Guest yes, no, definitely modi and trump are charter members of that illiberal group. Modern india was created in the late 1940s on a level basis because its an unbelievably Diverse Society pick it differs religiously by cast, by geography, by language as a said liberalism is basically a doctrine that seeks to allow diverse populations to live in peace under a general sense that all human beings should be treated fairly and equally. What modi and is bgp, his Internationalist Party has been trying to doin is shift that National Identity to one that is based on hinduism which then excludes basically muslims and christians that make upll a significant part of the indian population. I think this is a real formula for a lot of violence which india has already experienced when he was a chief minister and was pushing a similar kind of agenda i think in the case of donald trump, he doesnt say this quite so explicitly but hes given permission for a lote of white nationalists to say that no, we dont accept this diverse multiracial multicultural america as of the two america, that theres another over america that was founded on common religious christianhr values, that had a certain racial definition, and thats the kind of america that he and a lot of his followers being eroded. So again hes got something less than the universal understanding of who is that deserve dignity in the world. I think thats one of the things that is currently boiling american politics. Host francis fukuyama, did term and a meaning that comes up often in your writing is political decay. When you use that term what do you mean . Guest so political decay is something ive always used. It doesnt appear in my 1992 book the end of history in the last man, because i just wasntu aware of this process. But basically political decay occurs when you create a modern state that is functional but it gets undermined by, especially elite groups that seek to capture the state to make use of it for their own purposes, to protect their positions. Its the tendency of human institutions to get overly rigid. Human beings are rule following creatures. Thats one of the characteristics that simply is not into human nature. Once you get a set of rules that people follow, they want to continue following them, the environment changes, thinks of work so well and what looked like a good set of rules in an earlier age no longer become functional but when youre trapped in a system because you are unable to change it, barring war, collapse, crisis. That i think is the situation america is facing right now. Its got a very old Constitutional Order that has served it very well for more than a couple of centuries. But that order has big problems right now andgh the system doest seem to be able to correct itself. Part of it is just we have a constitution that is very hard to amend but also americans get used to doing things in certain ways and they cant imagine changes to those institutions that they define themselves by. As a result the system begins to decay and it becomes much less effective trend what i want to read a quote from Robert George of princeton university. This is from may of this year, and he was quoted on twitter essay, if pulse are to be believed, there has been a precipitous decline in americans belief in the importance of patriotism, religion, marriage and family, and Community Values that, broadly speaking, have throughout her history united americans despite our many differences. By the Authority Vested in me absolutely no one, ive declared june to be fidelity month, a month dedicated to renewing fidelity to god, spouses and families, our country, and our communities. I dont know if you saw that when professor george make that statement but what is your reaction . Guest robbie is a friend of mine. We both served together on the president george w. Bush bioethics counsel, and we have disagreed about many things ever since then. So i would say you have to disaggregate a lot of the things that robbie talks about their. I think that, for example, belief in god, thats happening. Theres a lot of data that shows that at least in terms of fidelity to institutionalize religion there has been a big change. Gen z as much less religious than the preceding generations. Some of those declines are actually class based. If you think about Something Like marriage or bringing children up in a singleparent family, one of the very unfortunate things thats happened in american societyty s actually for welltodo people, meaning people with Higher Education, professionals, actually those institutions havh gotten stronger. For welltodo people, the trend is been in the opposite direction. Instead of latchkey children you now have helicopter parents that are much too devoted to their children or their childrensot n good. But for workingclass people come for people with lower levels of education that decay has continued and thats one of the great divide in society that is a drug crisis, and opioid crisis, hits workingclass people and more educated e are largely immune to and thats one of the sources of polarization. At patriotism is a complicated issue. I think that therein is a deep problem because americans, i had thought when i was growing up, had actually come to an understanding of National Identity that i thought was a very good place to be after the civil rights movement. There was a divorce between what defines an american and of their race or gender, and it really centered around basically liberal values. I think that thats what allowed me as a Third Generation descendent of japanese immigrants to regard myself as fully american. But i hate to say that in the last decade a number of americans have been retreating from that understanding of american identity and they want to relocate it in a particular race or ethnicity. One of the problems with patriotism is that you have to define whats country, whats the National Identity switch to being patriotic. The left and the right, red and blue these days, say we both believe in the constitution but the actualey belief and very different understandings of what the american constitution implies. That means that once patriotism, you know, ivanka trump during the january 6th right said okay, patriots, go express yourselves. But felt that the meaning of patriotism i think that anybody on the other side of that divide would find remotely acceptable. And so do Americans Still love the country . Re i think yes, but which country is it that they really love . I think that something that has come its not deteriorated or its just split insurance very different understandings of what america is and what it represents trend what so professor fukuyama when it comes identity politics and Critical Race Theory which you write about as well, how did this fit into what we are discussing right now . Guest thereya is been a huge shift in the self understanding of what it means to be a progressive or a person on the left. So for most of the 20th century it was defined in very broad class terms. Karl marx had a version of this with the fundamental divide for him was between the bourgeoisie and the proletarians, so basically if youki workingclass your oppressed and so forth i think that as time went on in the second half of the 20th century that understanding of marginalization and oppression became to be much more rooted in specific groups that had been marginalized, and so i think there is a completely appropriate recognition that being workingclass was a very different experience for white people than it was for africanamericans. Certainly the differences in Workplace Experiences between men and women were very different and, therefore, you had to define inequality and is much more specific termsch that had to do with identities that were not shared universally across society but apply to particular groups. Now, in terms of the next book i wrote liberalism, i think that there is a very liberal understanding of identity understood, rather than as a liberal way of interpreting identity. Martin luther king said africanamericans are being mistreated they are treated as secondclass citizens and what we want is to be able to enjoy the same rights that white people enjoy. That is exactly a liberal understanding of the universality of dignity. But i think there is a different understanding that basically has become more entrenched in recent years that says these differences are much more essential, that they are not things that can be overcome, effectively define who you are as an individual. At least twoha very different kd of identity politics in which the circumstances you have no control over what skin color you are, what gender you are and so forth, the things that most identify you. And that i think is, becomes a problem in a liberal society because it means that your Group Membership is really whats important. Thats really whats going to determine the weight the state treat you, how youre going to get a job, how youre going to get into a university, this sort of thing. That becomes an illiberal understanding of Human Society trend. Host i want to read a quote from former president barack obama. This is from earlier this month on cnn. Quote, its very hard to sustain democracy when you have such massive concentrations of wealth here and so, part of my argument has been that unless we attend to that, unless we make people feel more economically secure and were takenom more seriously the need to create ladders of opportunity and a stronger safety net thats adapted to these new technologies and the displacements that are going on around the world, if we dont take care of that, thats also going to fuel the kind of mostly firelight populism, but it can also potentially come from the left, that is undermining democracy because it makes people angry and resentful and scared. Guest yeah. Well, i agree completely without. Its funny, i agree actually with most of these kind of broad statementsme of principles that obama has made both as president and subsequently. Yes, i think that in a democracy you have to worry about not just the quality of formal rights but substantive equality. Socioeconomic differences become too extreme, people get very resentful and did begin to lose faith in the legitimacy of the system. I think some of her actually a good deal of s what was driving the populations of both the right and the left in the 2010s was the growth of inequality that in turn was a byproduct i think of lets call it neoliberal economic policies that have been pursued begin ing in the late 70s through the 80s and 90s that created a lot of inequality. Thats something, and the solution i also agree with what obama said you need more redistribution. Unique protections that equalize outcomes and not simply opportunity you need like obamacare, the Affordable Care act that try to provide a certain minimal level of healthcare all american spirit that something every other modern democracy provides for its citizens except for the United Statess, up until the aca was passed in 2010. And i think in general a more expansive welfare state with more protections for people that yes, because it does rem rich to poor, that would go a long way to securing peoples belief in the legitimacy of democracy. I think the social democracy that grew up in europe in the postworld war ii period that was represented by the american new deal and Great Society and so forth they were very important in anchoring democracy. So i have absolutely no quarrel with that. I think the problem, however, is that im not sure that, so if the problem is just economic inequality, you can remedy that through some fairly easy policies. I think weve been in the process of doing that. You can raise taxes on rich people and you can use that money to provide more healthcare, more education, more social benefits. The problem i think right now is about the resentments and the polarization between red and blue is not simply about economic inequality. If it were, you could fix that problem fairly easily. And if that were the real driver, the populist upsurge shouldve been Bernie Sanders rather than donald trump it really shouldve taken form more state intervention in the economy, more protection, but it took this curious other form in which it was really cultural complaint that rose to the fore, like hostility to immigration, these fights over crt and National Identity. And right now whats defining the Republican Party is actually not so much economic they were actually okay with expanding, not dismantling Social Security and that sort of thing but what really is driving the passions of his cultural issues that may have been treated by economic inequality. They are kind of separate also. I think thats why simply more social protections isnt going to really heal the problems that exist in our society. Host since the publication of your book in 1992, the end of history and the last man, have your political views evolving anyway . Ca course. Of i wrote nine books after the end of history in the last minute and you can kind of trace that evolution through those books. I just dont consider myself as much of conservative anymore as i did back when that book was written. And i would say that a lot of that was in reaction to acute realworld developments that i thought had the roots in conservative ideas and lead to very bad outcomes there the first was the iraq war. I originally thought that getting rid of Saddam Hussein was a good idea, but as we get closer to the work i became more and more skeptical that this would actually work out well. And sureou enough it worked out actually much worse than even i anticipated at that time. I think it did a lot to discredit the idea of democracy and certainly american democracy promotion. It still the case in the global south when the United States complains about the russian invasion of ukraine, a lot of people especially in the arab world turn around and say you do the same thing to iraq, so who are you to be, other than a big hypocrite about this course that was one picked up the other was acr financial crisis in 2008, which i think was driven by a certain interpretation of market fundamentalism that had taken hold and again was a dominant conservative idea of margaret thatcher, ronald reagan, and a lot of the american right for that period of time. These were both ideas that simply didnt work out and it seemed to me at that point that things arere not going to work t you have to readjust what you think about the world. In that respect i changed my view. Now, the other thing that i began to think about were different and a little bit more perhaps academic rather than political. So the first is this issue that we fondly mentioned which is the idea political detainee. When i wrote the end of history in the last man i sort of had this conception of history being a oneway ratchet, that you move, maybe move backward a little bit but ultimately the ratchet would allow you to go forward and i didnt really a anticipate the idea especially in the United States that you could have a rapid and pretty catastrophic decay in a way that our institutions were. But perhaps the most important insight that i developed, this is really something that is worked out in the course of these two volumes that i wrote on the origins of political order and political order in political decay, only had to do with the role of the state. I didnt appreciate how important just having estate was, and i think this was a cognitive problem for Many Americans because americans just assume this the state is io exist. For many of them they think that thats what you have to protect individuals from the state. The main problem in politics is constraining the state, and they dont understand that if you dont have a state you are going to end up in a really bad situation. This was really driven home by our experience in both afghanistan and iraq where you had a collapse of state institutions in both countries. The United States was then responsible for creating order out of that kind of chaos, and where new intellectual resources to figure out you dont estate in a society where the state doesnt exist, where you basically have rule by armed militias, and civil war and really horrible violations of basic rights. If you dont have the state you cant protect Peoples Security and the right to simply live securely. Answer that started a whole train of investigation, kind of academic investigation on my part. Because i realized that as a political scientist, at least in that period, we didnt have a lot of resources to understand where states came from because like a lot of other people we assume the state is always going to exist and its a question of what do you do with it, how do you limit it and so forth . That was the origin of these political order book where i wanted to go back not just to greece and rome and earlier human civilizations in my the origins of political order book i go back to primate behavior to try to understand how societies create order. In the process at a certain point maybe 8000 years ago you got the first states the peering in mesopotamia and the nile valley and the yellow river valley in china, and the valley of mexico, and that was in a sense a big revelation. That early process of statebuilding and how it was that the states came about that might have some implications for what you might want to do in places like iraq and afghanistan for now, theres a much longer discussion about what happens when you get to the state because i think that the distinction between just having a state, which is basically the friends and family of the group that impose their will on the rest of society and a modern state where the ruler believes that he or she is a Public Servant that is meant to serve the interests of the whole society, and to do that in a impartial way is a further evolution of Political Institutions that is extremely difficult to bring about. And has really happened in only a little too small handful of societies. That is something i simply did not appreciate the difficulty of creating a state that has low levels of corruption that can deliver Public Services and public goods effectively. That something thats. Much harder to bring about than democracy. Democracy is pretty easy here weve got mechanism for Holding Elections and checking whether they are relatively free and fair. But its much harder to get to that modern state. So thisa is a problem that i labeled getting to denmark where, unlike Bernie Sanders, what iha like about denmark is t that its a social democracy. Thats important, but whats really remarkable about denmark and the rest of scandinavia is that they have got very clean and effective government. Theyve got big states but they are states that deliver on the things that the state is supposed to deliver on. Healthcare, education, security, and the like. And the question of getting to denmark is something that i really had not appreciated the difficulty of. So that is certainly one of the things i learned in the years after i wrote the end of history and its really kind of been the subject of a lot of Academic Work and research that ive done in the years since. Host thank you for joining us on this Independence Day weekend for this conversation with author and professor francis fukuyama. As professor fukuyama mentioned he has written nine books since his 1992 the end of history book. Were going to be focusing on format of the import of the arctic the origins of political order from prehuman times to the french revolution came out in 2011 to the followup to that political order and political decay from the Industrial Revolution to present day came out in 2014. Identity the demand for dignity and the politics and resentment, 2018. And liberalism and its discontents came out last year. If you like to participate in this conversation, if you send the tax, please include your first name and your city if you would. Weve also scroll through all our social media sites you want to make a comment via social media you can do so there. Professor fukuyama first appeared on booktvs indepth program in 2006 and 17 years later we are pleased to have them back to talk about his updated work. In the origins of political order order, you talk about three things, the state, the rule of law, and accountable government. What are those . Guest well, i think those are the foundations of any modern just political order. The state is a power institution. Its about generating the social powers so that you can protect the community, provide security both internall and external. You can enforce laws and you can deliver basic services, health, education, infrastructure and the like. So thats the power institution. The rule of law fundamentally is a set of agreedupon rules that limit the powerha of the state d so our rights are rooted in the rule of law and the fact that the state cannot do whatever it wants, and if it is rule of law rather than by law, it means that those rules are applied to the rumors as well as the rules, right . In china they have got ruled by law after the communist party and the person at the top of the communist party makes the rules and it forces them against the rest of thehe society but that person is not subject to those same rules they are pretty much exempt. If you have a true of law it means everybody really has to follow those basic rules. Then finally the third pillar is democratic accountability whereu the ruler, the identity of the road is determined by the people through free and Fair Elections so that the ruler represents the will at least have the greatest part of the population. A modern political order is a balance. So on the one hand, youve got the state which is a power institution, and on the other hand, youve got the rule of law and democratic accountability, and to try to limit the power of the state. I think the difficulty of achieving a good political order is that that balance is hard to get out a period if youre too far over on the state side, you are china peer got a very powerful state but you dont have constraints on that state so the ruler can do whatever he wants. Shes in pain basically gets to set the fundamental rules. On the other hand, if youve got are institutions that constrain and a very weak state come thats actually the situation of many developing countries. Take Something Like afghanistan before the taliban took over. For digital elections. They had something that they labeled the rule of law but their state was incapable of providing security. Thats the fundamental definition of the state is a monopoly of power over territory. Thats a disease that affects many developing countries. So getting that balance right between having a status got enough capacity to be effective but also his constraint so t doesnt violate the rights of its citizens and reflects their will,an thats what real liberal democracy aims to be, and that something that is actuallyy quie hard to get right. Host when it comes to liberal democracy, what is your take on religion . Guest well, its complicated because there is definitely a relationship between modern understandings on democracy and religious origins. In christianity there is this belief in human universalism, you know, that all human beings are creatures of god and in a sense equal in his eyes. One of the big transformations that happens in european thought between lets say the protestant reformation and the enlightenment is that that doctrine become separate from its religious context and becomes an assertion about human nature in a secular form of. Early liberals believed in that human universalism but didnt connect it to the particular religiouss origins. And i think there are other ways that religion affects the functioning of democracy so, for example, the traditional understanding of why american democracy was so successful was the one that was actually outlined by alexis de tocqueville when he visited the United States in the 1830s and he said americans are very good at this art of association. You dont need a centralized estate to get them to organize, they can do that in your communities and they form, they learn citizenship by participating in voluntary organizations. Certainly at the time he wrote, the vast majority of those organizations religious in nature they were Bible Studies or temperance movements, you know, of various sorts. The traditional sociological argument for why associational life, as dense as it is in the United States, is that it had to do with this sectarian nature of american protestantism where he didnt have a centralized hierarchical church. Directly competing churches and that was one of the reasons why the generosity was stronger in the United States, but in other developed democracies because people were not forced to join a church. To sign up tove the state church. If they wanted the comfort that religion would give them, then they could associateem with whatever sect they wanted to, and that created the grounds for democratic citizenship and participation. If you bought a recent example of this, look at the civil rights movement. Martin luther king was a baptist minister, and a lot of civil rights, Civil Society groups that organize work church groups, or people both africanamerican and white organize around their churches in order to seek a social justice. In that sense i think religion actually has been important. However,r, basic tenant of liberalism is that we dont have one religion, and we dont have a state that tries to impose a single religion on everybody. Tolerance, religious tolerance is one of the foundational principles of a liberal society. That is what drove early liberals to create this form of government that basically was an agreement to lower the temperature of discourse by taking final and as defined by religion out of the public arena and replicate that to private belief and that since religion is something that is not compatible with the modern understanding of the liberal society. Host francis fukuyama, graduated from cornell, phd from harvard, worked at george mason and Johns Hopkins for many years, is now at stanford. Lets take some calls. Mike is in new york. Go ahead, mike. Caller good afternoon. Near term and area policy and say for the next 25 to 30 years. I would like him to give his analysis of how chinas behavior in 15, 20 years compares to Imperial Japan from 1990 through 1941. Thank you, sir. I think china has been for some time, the modernization was truly remarkable, a great history from extremely poor country to the second largest economy in the world. I think theres some evidence they may have reached the peak and are on the downside but they have a lot of momentum and i think theyba want to remake word order in a way that will be favorable to them. I dont think they are like the former sovieter union but it got this messianic review has to prevail everywhere and everybody has to be like china. I think many chinese dont think they are capable of emulating them with respect for bureaucracy and internal state organizations but they do not respect. The hundred years was recognized as a great civilization and they want to have it and it provides ao challenge to everyone else. I think the comparison with japan is accurate in certain ways. Theres power in east asia in the early 20th century but the did that one colonialism was the norm. Over korea, taiwan and other parts of china and i dont think the chinese are like that, its really taiwan right now because agree taiwan as part of china and they would like to reincorporate and that is the biggest contention they tried to do that by force but i dont think they take over, they want influence, respect but they dont necessarily want empire. Next call from cornelius in louisiana. Go ahead andn make your comment uior question. s first, happy fourth of july weekend. You are to look at abraham the first africanamerican agent for president kennedy who tried to prevent the kennedy assassination. R is that a new book . Ill be honest, i dont. I appreciate the. Ecommendation i was a Police Officer trained against the russian they have this initiative going around buying of everything and they have a secret base which is a military base in cuba does like the cuban missile crisis during kennedy and you said you were conservative and now you leftw, the conservative party. President trump tried to prevent january 6 but theres evidence he tried to gette 20000 troops there before nancy pelosi and Mitch Mcconnell saw that they were ordered not to do anything and democrats have said the fbi knew about january 6 coming in they did nothing. President trump personally you got a lot here, lets see professors response. Well, i think the material that comes out of the january 6 committee tells you more accurately what happened. In terms of china fulton Road Initiative is driven by a lot of motives. One is his construction the they dont have what business in china want to make profit and they go abroad. They do want to expand the influence. The use of this initiative for strategic military, there are iscertain facilities be returned to great its a political one to cultivate political and the developing world. A lot of them have developed real problems and not making money in their own countries, argentina and going into a debt crisis so they are behaving a lot like european creditors 30, 40 years ago generating a lot of resentment for countries that cannotot pay the attorneys debt. I would say thats the problem the chinese have created for this initiative. The origins of political order came out in 2011, the first of the twopart falling. He dedicated to Samuel Huntington, who is he . One of the great political scientists of the 20th century. There are many fields with Political Science where he made a big mark the first of many ways was political order published in 1968 so up until then, theres been a broad consensual amongst social scientists, modernization that said this would go together, economicer growth, individual freedom, rule of law, more democracy and these things would be mutually supportive. Huntington is the first major voice to cast, in m response military takeovers going on in many physical world and said basically these things do not go together you have true economic modernization youre going to raise expectations we dont have a political system to satisfy the expectation, well get him to go become a pilot social breakdown and i think he was right about the. He basically understood the importance of the state for the reason i dedicated the book to him was too political culture in effort to update this is it is a precondition for theer other society can engage in where it is coming from and we kind of assume you can get rid of this and disband the army and securityy forces and somehow continuously has order. The biggest mistake made by american policy is that led to the chaos and militia and civil conflict descended in the years after that so huntington would not have been a surprise for result. Youre not were to have rule of law because you need the state to enforce the law but it did need to be updated. Of people Samuel Huntington 1968 and the last man from 1992. Huntington on the first paid said soviet union is still a growing concern and proved to be wrong and got a number of things wrong. Its a time when its something hunting them himself in the 21st century when it is expanded that is not that. But there is regressive but its not a pattern that continued longer than a generation. There is one aspect of what i wrote and 92 that continued to be a theme of more recent especially attentive to that of recognition and dignity in human affairs. As part of human psychology, there is a third part you have this recognition and that are not satisfied peace and security if we dont get that respect we get angry and 1992 i said this is a weakness of democracy cannot satisfied by asperity this recognition into the last part of thehe book, last man cos from the philosopher who said you get to the modern liberal state is they cant aspire to, if they aspire to justice because of the critical part and i think that is what we are witnessing and they are not content living in the richest stable societies they want other things and important members of society driving the instability. A question orh comment . Its an honor to talk with you guys. Im aub Public School middle School Teacher ohio. I am a center left person and there is great purpose in education especially the switch and i am optimistic about living in the u. S. I think there is real danger, the industrialization and globalization are taking jobs but was a lot of developing countries have lifted people out of poverty and to hear about inequality you back this era and think people were healthy as well. Migrating from developing countries we watched and read about this, people literally walking to get to this continent so i tried to be optimistic and its a great country to grow up in. Love to hear your thoughts. Thank you very much. I have great effect for you as a middle School Teacher because you are doing gods work and if you transmit the optimism to your students, ive always thought one of the biggest offenses was the thesis despite setbacks and all we have been american democracy you ask where people from poor disorganized corrupt dysfunctional societies when they leave those places, where they want to go . China, russia, iran . They want to come to the United States, canada or europe. I think that indicates theres opportunity of freedom and chance for a life that exists in the United States. If you look at the world as a whole between early 70s and the financial crisis increased fourfold. All goods and services were produced the world quadrupled and china managed several hundred billion of its own citizens of property thats been going on in india and Subsaharan Africa and you look at the whole globalization is a good thing. The problem is its not necessarily a w good thing for every person in every country and what happened is low skilled jobs got cap sourced and populism in the rich world and its true taken as a whole they did a lot better but the effect is not necessarily good because it greatest inequality so that is another consequence. I want to go back to origins read a question in my notes and i dont know if this is legit or not, i i asked myself after reading the book, u. S. Ever not been dysfunctional . Its greater than other periods of history its a pretty high degree of dysfunction and other periods in the late 19th century was polarized and we have had the deepest stain on National Political development in the issue of race and it took to civil war to get to formal equality and greater quality that everybody understands social quality economic equality, we are still not there so thats an enduring problem the United States faces. On the other hand, could you use Democratic Institutions to get to policies that progressively make things better . The system has been functional, its just taken a long time to get to the Civil Rights Era but it eventually happened. The other question, is United States functional compared to otherl societies . It remains the case and Economic Growth engine is unparalleled predicting americans decline relative to other parts of the world and even after covid, coming after covid it looks pretty good despite elevated rates of inflation, extremely low unemployment we continue to be elevated. You look at whatlo is happeningt china and other severe problems but also convert to europe and japan i do think theres something functional going on in the United States that continues to be impressive and a beacon of attraction and a lot of people fortunate in this country. The ark to 50 years in the original phrase this is what i find frustrating in the way we teach our history because it seems canto keep your ideas in your head in the first idea is this original sin of slavery and jim crow institutionalized racism the effects continue into the present day is just a fact of history but also the case that there has been progress situation of africanamericans simply not the same as 1619 or date there hasr been progress realizing the promise of the declaration of dependence that men are created equall, a lot of people have ben excluded and that is my understanding we have the basic problem in being able to deal with them but compared to other societies in the revolution, im not sure its something that is uniquelyrr terrible. David, closer, good afternoon to you. Thank you for this program, it is the best program on television. I would like to ask the definition of Critical Race Theory and the role is playing in politics today. Theres a version established that extended critical theory to racial issues that decentralized a characteristic of the United States i i think elevated importance and that interpretation of American History is what i said minus the progress. It argues progress has been more apparent and fundamental reality is continuation of systemic racism and if that is what friends Critical Race Theory, i think the wrong. A more balanced understanding of racism but also the possibility of the passing. A lot of republicans have latched onto the most extreme assertions of crt and is characteristic of the way everybody on the left thinks about that particular issue and exaggerated the importance and books talking about the civil rights struggle unacceptable reading for young people because it plumbed into this and you absolutely have to teach the terrible things that happen in racial history in the United States. The real purpose problematic is that nothing should be done because it is a feature in our system that has denied the possibility of the past in the future but you have tried to strike a balance of the polarized politics to help today to you should be able to create this but also believe there are certain advantages to our system. Next call is from lucerne valley, california. Hi, john. Spoke i previously about organized religion and virtue such as dignity, fidelity and temperance within the civil context. Ive been working to ground these moral whoor choose within this Behavior Foundation as outlined in this solution. I want to ask you, you worked out scientific types of behavior . I dont know how you define this, this is something put out i think in 1998 or nine called the great destruction and i took on an argument that religion is necessary for moral order and explain the risee of dysfunction of crimes, family breakdowns and the like. My basic argument is close to what you might suggest, human beings are social creatures and it is a method used for certain moral codes and standards that you dont need religion to do that because it is so strong it will reassert itself and if you want empirical conversations, fearless in terms of asking to go to church and do you believe in god . They say no but crime rates and breakdown rates are much more than the United States and if you look at heist rates of social dysfunction, they occur in places where religiosity is the strongest so one more example is east asia, theres not work last religion, they got various forms of shaman is but you simply dont have this religious you for a clear set of moral views and they are relatively functional, well ordered society so i believe there a lot of things that promote social order. We have about 45 minutes. 7488200 if you live in central time zone. We have text 200. Good your city and first name. This is the text like the British Empire likely has the most experience created for a modern state, what is your assessment of the history, good and bad . I think it was a good legacy or the british succeeded in creating a state. Primary example would be india. India has a state report was conquered but the british created modern institutions to the administered service was British Indian civil service, it was created by the british so that was a case where it will india for a couple hundred years and had the time and energy to create this institution but many other places gently behind anything remarkable. A british colony that never had anything comparable to state institutions and dysfunctions as it has an extremely weak government that enforces rules and provide basic order in many cases of. In a rural strategy they knew they couldnt create order and they tried to play one ethnic group off another and it led to a different set off dysfunction and they received independence. The major groups that were a means of a divided rural strategy that is the competition between five or six major groups so i would say the British Legacy has been very mixed its important to create the institutions. Time to modernize the constitution, how would you got. I think there are many features of these constitutionst that do need modification and probably one ofhe the is the Electoral College which means they determine kits to be elected and other aspects overrepresented smaller space. It was going deliberately by Founding Fathers to get the smaller states and gave them veto power over things that would diminish the but it led to the fact that california two senators and wyoming with less than a Million People to distortion so i think we want to do is modify the system to people in proportion to these and the prospect to that is almost zero. The Founding Fathers made it extremely difficult, not just in congress but among the states to bring up amendment and one reason there are so few amendments in this prospect you get enough on a modification to get these super majorities so there other practices we have that we could implement change in our electoral system from a win or take all system like rank choice but if would make your party more feasible than they are under the Current System for individual states so i would think focusing on things that can be changed while the pieinthesky of what we ought to be focusing on right now. Michael in florida, go ahead with your professional,. It is wonderful to hear you speak because you are one of the last true optimist i believe. You talk about Natural Evolution into liberal democracy like the look democracy i think a lot of libertarian based on what i sent casey mcafee for government when we can communicate as clearly have hierarchy. Law efficiency there are going to come through the government have chaos . You have a strong centralized . Programs that will devolve into this program that will drive the logical democracy and i want to add, if you look at all thats been written is in place not one single one that is one 100 fully up and that is what is internal production of whats going on, is literally biology. We were to leave it there and get a response. But its going to get boring and thats why every movie has drama or conflict. Being a Classical Liberal is not the same ass being libertarian but basically the government is bad and try to minimize the role of government in every aspect of life. I think it is us a big mistake and you cannot have modern society if you dont have a modern state able to enforce rules able to deliver will want to protect the community especially at the scale of the country nearing 350 Million People, who cant do that, its not good to come about spontaneously. Youre not going to get people to band together on a horizontal basis to protect the communities or if they do, you have descended into militia and that will be more than legitimate democratic elected government so. Every society has to be a mixture of centralized hierarchy bottom up spontaneous cooperation and if you have too much of the letter, you have this hierarchical situation so you got to join the two and other Technology Particularly the internet raised the possibility grassroots cooperation to the complaining about sociall media is still the case social media provides opportunity for Grassroots Organization that didnt exist before and thats the reason countries like china and russia want to squash the ability of people to on this horizontal basis so that is Something Technology is providing but cant just be that. You have toan have the hierarchical system and defined with the extent of the rules of the. Most recent book came out last year. Pat, you arere on the air. Thank you. I am concerned about globalism, not so much globalization of industry but the need for educational government industrial think they can tell everyone. As government goes away from the people more and more comes out of washington and the world forum, American Freedom divides globalism think you l exaggerating the power to call globalists institutions. World Health Organization is an advisor they put out about the trends different evidence and no power and i think it is right and responsibly Health Policy who b at the National Level andf you look at existing institutions, they are like that, theyve not been willing to give up hisiv stubborn and cn authorities and one part of the world in which this has happened is your, European Community delegates the ability european institutions and did that momentarily. They think they are better off as a result and has created backlash where people dont like or understand but i think europeans are helping with but we dont live in europe and the ho is going to do anything but please what they think are good but americans are free to accept or reject those in going back to the corporate pandemic really think we should be careful exaggerating powerful these really are. I will go back to your book in 2014 right is not the same thing civilizational line will be reversible, its physically institutional rigidity and capture of the state by a lease and that is the line to ask about. That is the respect i agree with the former caller in terms of american politics because we interpreted our constitution in a way thatns does not allow the state to regulate money and politics which others do, it is a freeforall where corporations and rich individuals simply by support to protect themselves so one aspect allows hedge funds and other financial dictations to get a lower level than individuals would and the only way to explain is the capture of members of congress through lobbying and so forth. It has gone to extraordinary levels, not complete control, otherwise you couldnt explain Bernie Sanders or donald trump because that was not the choice of majority but it does mean you have excessive elite control of the mechanisms of american democracy and it will reduce atthat control if you had serios campaignfinance legislation but different polarization we are not able to get to the other democracies, i think we could in theory do this. Good afternoon. Good afternoon, peter. My observation is, you talked s,about healthcare being one of the functions of the state. Everyta time the state tried to expand healthcare, it seems People Revolt against it and 65, we passed medicare in 1966 republicans made gains in the house and 1968 Richard Nixon was elected president in 2009, obamacare in the Affordable Care act was passed in 2010, the republicans made gains. So what are your points . Maybe the people dont want our systems particularly healthcare. Thank you. We got it. Every other bridge democracy in thehe world has had governmet mandates and sometimes is Healthcare Systems provides minimal level of citizens from others good economic logic for doing that because if you dont have to worry about health insurance, you dont have to worry about a better job on different state and so forth which is what weve got this state that plan, some are more generous than others so that is good economic project but i would say youre right, is a lot of resistance and this is one of the unfortunate manifestations of except. It should be exceptionally good but also exceptionally bad or dysfunctional and is one of these cases where there is the political culture of distrust of the state that i think americans have pathological extremes and cases where there is a really good function for government to provide certain service, we resist it because we think all of government is that it is the most conservative labeling of obamacare andnd aca as centralid medicine and we are going to havee. Socialism in the United States. If that is the case the United States is bridge democracy because every other one, japan, korea, germany, norway, everyone of these has a universal Health System mandated by theve government and it is the peculiarity of anti statism that leads us to reject it. Are you still in the classroom . If so, what is your take on this . I am still in the classroom, one of the things are not looking forward to his the applications and essays i have to go through some of the programs that will be written by check keep. These were written by a computer but now they are literally going to be written by a computer. Im not sure have to deal with that. I teach in a Diverse International group, i run a program in International Policy and 40, sometimes 50 of students come from other countries so its a little hard to characterize them as a whole. I do think is think of an increase entitlement would say my students are less subject and other parts of university of the change i think is a change for the worse. On the other hand, incredibly well prepared. I think Higher Education institution does a great job teaching people basic skills and. There are areas i think they better so american universities basically given up on teaching civics and basic knowledge of how their political system works. I like my students. Good afternoon. What a privilege to get a chance to ask you a question. My question is based on my reading of postmodernism by stephen does an excellent job of the intellectual history of marxist and anti enlightenment. My question for you is, to what extent do you see postmodern rises on the left and the right of modern experiment with United States and overall globalization . Thank you for technical. Grad you pose the question, liberalisml in that particular issue so i think the court of postmodernist is a critique of human cognition. Liberal enlightenment began with the external objective growth and manipulate that something recall modern Natural Science of that has come to attack and i think it begins on the left. I spent a couple of years of my life, i went to paris and studied. I knew a lot of the french whose thoughts migrated to the United States and took hold in american universities but one of these central critiques made particularly by a critique of modern science and a series of books he basically said the old days if you didnt like one of the subjects, today we can do this, we have to use genworth techniques and what we think the truth is and and incarceration of homosexuality and a number of areas we argued persuasively what appears to be a scientific hidden interest of an elite trying to buy compliance and loyalty among subjects and then generalize not to say basically the whole of science is not the objective truth, its about power. Use the technique asnc a means f enhancing their power. I think its true in many respects. You have this American History scientific racism where supposedly scientific observers talk about racial hierarchies so there is no question there are examples but then brought the technique of modern science, everything is subjected and represents the power of elites to manipulate things behind the scene is to undermine the project that makes science possible. What happened during the covide epidemic is the idea that had taken root on the left and formed a lot of progressive thought been migrated to the right where there is a general critique of science that begins with the Public Health authorities in retrospect, they made a lot of mistakes. A lot of the way science works, you dont know the actual cost and how its transmitted and the protection against it. All of this stuff a lot of times to get wrong in this general narrative the vaccines and all these other measures Public Health authorities recommend ejected is busy on the part of hidden elites to manipulate people t and rendered themselves more powerful. Is this is exactly the argument. It is from issues they care about on the shoes on the right they care about. This is destructive because its made possible by the possibility of science. It is Something Like an objective truth we never get completely right that they are techniques to get closer to that truth and ifif we dont have the wouldnt have much of the economic world. Go ahead with your question or comment. When it comes to Critical Race Theory, the Democratic Party, divide and conquer. Talking about how it will fundamentally change the nation. He didnt fundamentally change good arctic welcoming people but we didnt fundamentally change Democratic Party but there is overwhelming evidence youre talking about political corruption, personal corruption. They want a one party system, this is x essential threat within our country, globalism and socialism has a lot to do with ideology. Lets get a response. I completely disagree. A lot of the identity politics by myself object to is believed by progressive wing of the Democratic Party but that party rejected the most leftleaning candidate in 2020 Bernie Sanders. Obama didnt believe any of this stuff. If you go back and read the speeches, hes a Classical Liberal leaning classical and my sense believing universality of Human Dignity no particular Group Article held up above any other particular group. A lot of people take crazy staples by individuals kind of one extreme wing of the democratic monument. The diversity within that party than i think you are giving them credit for. What and that personal essay for students that are applying to be in your class what appeals to you . It is interesting. The part that i think tends to get written by the computer is i found an ngo at the age of 15 and then i found mathematics at 17. They are kind of checking all the boxes the admission committees and what they are looking at. I think that what, you know, the more useful kinds of things, descriptions of their personal struggles. The problem i think is chat dbt will be able to come up with this kind of a narrative in the future. Sometimes you can verify things that people said. They come from an underprivileged background or they really have had to struggle with really bad family conditions or, you know, personal experiences or traumatic and they managed to keep the ship right in and get to all of that. I think that that is something that i take seriously. I think that all of this is dangerous because once you identify what the reader of the application is looking for, you can get the computer to deliver up whether its true or not. That is what i, that is what i, you know, focus on. Lets go to the other side of the coin. If you have a bias or two. Mike from detroit. If he were in your class without effect your grade . No. You cannot let it evaluate the student. I am talking about Political Institutions and, you know, a way that does have implications for your partisan choices. You will never grade somebody based on those partisan outcomes you will grade people on the basis of did they use evidence, did they make coherent arguments , did they cite credible sources when they are putting together the case that they are making . Those are the things that you look for. Whether that benefits one partisan side or the other, i think is, you know, is not what you make judgments based on. Oklahoma city, thank you for holding. Go ahead. I hear you and speak with you i guess that there is historical ignorance of the American Population andck the growing lak of interest in history among College Students to decline and the number of students now studying it. I use it as an example, if you would, for a dangerous precedent four example, time travelers guide, restoration for example gives the way they treated their servants and the english moved to america and carried them with them. That sort of lack of inability, lack of ability to understand the evolution of practices is worrisome. I wonder if you could comment. Thank you. Learning history is part of the task in civic education. If youio do not understand where youre institutions came from, historically, you will not understand how they operate in the present and im afraid that a lot of schools and in particular a lot of the elite schools have gotten rid of that basic education in american institutions. There used to be a required culture course required of all stanford students in the 1980s that basically starts with the hebrew bible and go through a lot of the Great Western thinkers. Culminating in the federalist papers and american constitution and then going on to a lot of other more recent thinkers. The university gotsi rid of tha. As a result of pressure from critics on the left that said western institutions. We should be studying china, india, the muslim world, i think that you do need this basic understanding. It should not come at the expense of understanding the western institutions that are the basis for our common held beliefs in our own american democracy. That simply is not taught in many schools today. I think that that is one of the reasons that you can get away with making so many bad ahistorical arguments on the political debate because people do not understand the history. Political order. You write, and i am paraphrasing you a little bit. Historical writing characterized as odt aa. What does that mean . Those letters stand for one damn thing after another. A lot of history is just recitation of this king came to power and then he was too close. Enthis happened and that happend and there was a war. You dont actually have an effort to draw a larger narrative. What common patterns you see in history. What kinds of institutions develop over time. What was their impact that would actually be useful in thinking about the precedent. You say okay we should study history. You could spend four years of the late Roman Republic in the sixth century and still not exhaust the literature. You haveuc to be much more focud in the kind of history. I think the World History and American History classes continue to try to do that. They try to focus on what are the basic number of facts that you really need to know to be conversant in those areas. A lot of universities have given up on that. I find among my students it is actually quite remarkable. Knowing facts about the way their own society developed. High school ap history courses. Every guest that appears on in depth, we ask what they are reading and what is some of their favorite books. Neal stephenson terminal in east fairbanks. Michael lewis. They are currently reading tara Isabel Burton self made. What is that book about . A very acute social observer. Her book is about modern identity. In modern times we have this idea that we have this unique self inside each and every one of us. We need to cultivate that. She gives thisgi history of basically self identification that in the end also just self promotion. She goes all the way back to the renaissance. She carries it to the kardashians in the present. In the end they think that it is not a healthy trend that will be constantlyn looking within ourselves for our bearings because we are social creatures. What is the deepest in our soul that we relate to other people. It kind of reveals this Common Thread of self creation that extends over many centuries and western history. We will show the favorites again is there anything that you want to speak to . I like Science Fiction in general. I have always loved his books because they really speak to the big political issues. It was written in the early 90s. It is about an america being reduced like many libertarians hoped out of the federal building. Everything else wasfe controlled where you would need passports and visas to go from one suburban subdivision to the next it was kind of fantasy about this libertarian world that was envisioned by many people. It is the latest book about global warming. It is about the fact that a single rich individual in texas is able to pump enough sulfur dioxide into the upper atmosphere that he can actually change the weather patterns in the indian monsoon and china and so forth. And how the world deals with Climate Change and that kind of technological technology existing. So they are kind of bookends to this long. Between the 90s and the president where our concerns are present from the libertarian wearing about things like global warming. Along with the l stephensons Science Fiction, Michael Lewis the fifth risk and Octavia Butler terrible of the sower. Last call. Please go ahead. We have about two minutes. Thank you for taking my call. Professor, you mentioned that you studied denmark. I will suggest a dutch republic which was founded in 1581. Included seven independent provinces and as part of their constitution they are the first country that had religious freedom. This was a problem for the pilgrims andnd that was after ty left england. They discovered their children were being exposed to other religions. We will leave it there. Thank you so much. Professor. Well, i had a visiting professorship at a danish university. Knowing denmark better. Ive been to the netherlands a lot. Getting to the netherlands but denmark it was because i knew that country personally appeared i want to finish with this quote the identity for dignity and the politics of resentment. The global search towards democracy that began in the 1970 s. What was labeled the third wave of democratization has gone into a global recession. Our present world is simultaneously moving towards the opposing of hyper centralization and endless fragmentation. Different parts of the world are seeing the breakdown of centralized institutions, the emergence ofs failed states, polarization of a growing lack overcome and inspired social media and the internet has facilitated the emergence of selfcontained communities. By belief in shared identity. Francis, stanford has been our guest for the past two hours. In depth 17 years from your first appearance. Thank you for having me. Be uptodate and the latest in publishing with db podcast about books. 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