Good afternoon Everyone Welcome back to the 2024 mccain conference here at the u. S. Naval academy in annapolis maryland. I am Jeffrey MacrisDeputy Director of the stockdale and its a great privilege to welcome another distinguished scholar. Doctors Francis Fukuyama the senior fellow at Stanford UniversitysFriedman Institute for international and a faculty member of the center for Democracy Development of rule of law. Hes the director of dorsey master in International Policy professor by courtesy of Political Science. Dr. Fukuyama has written widely on issues of development and international politics. His 1992 book the end of history and the last man has appeared i2 over 20 foreign translations. His latest book is entitled liberalism. Francis fukuyama received his va from Cornell University and a ph. D. From harvard in Political Science but its a great honor to welcome to annapolis Francis Fukuyama. [applause] i guess its appropriate in the sense of liberalism, there he is okay. It will be an interesting counterpoint. I consider excuse me i had a little motorcycle accident on tuesday and still feeling the effects of out sofi stop and grimace a little bit youll understand why. Inin any event i consider mysela classical liberal. Its important adjective putting classical in front of liberal because i think there has been an evolution of liberalism in certain directions that are not necessarily implied in liberalism and i think most of the complaints about liberalism actually have to do with the extensions of liberalismhe rathr than a doctrine so let me begin with a definition of what i regard as liberalism. Liberals believe in the universal a quality of Human Dignity. That is to say liberals do not believe that theres a Certain Group of human beings a certain class that has superior dignity to other groups and that dignity is something that needs to be protected by the rule of law that limitsf the ability of states to impinge on the rights of those individuals and that depends on things like constitutions, checks and balances that again our efforts to limit the power of the state. Now that distinguishes liberalism and Something Like a theocracy based on a single s religious doctrine and its also different from nationalism takes one ethnic group or race and places that at a higher dignity to otherhe people. Liberalism nationstates that have limited territory of jurisdiction and we can talk aboutis that later. Its divided into nationstates within the confines and liberalism asserts. They are basically three arguments that you can make in a row of liberalism. One is aer pragmatic one and the second is economic. Let me go over those. The pragmatic argument stems from the origin, the historical origin of liberalism. Liberalism appeared in the middle of the 17th century as a result of a european wars of religion. After the protestant reformation european roughly the next 150 years fighting each other. Something like a third of the population of Central Europe died in the 30year war a very bloody conflict and to think at the end of that period a lot of european thinkers decided that they needed to lower the temperature of politics such that politics would not be around a central definition of the good life. They c were competing definitios of the good life and liberal thinkers argued the state ought neutral with regard to it and that means the central liberal virtue is toleration. Youre going to lure the horizons of politics in order to preserve life itself so people wouldnt kill each other over the kinds of sectarian differences that animated european politics in previous generations. Its a means of governing over diversity. Iv the reason you want a liberal society as societies are diverse religiously ethnically racially in very many ways in liberalism as a way to allow those different groups to live next to each other peacefully. The moral justification for liberalism really have to do with the protection of human autonomy and ability of human beings to exercise choice. I think that this ultimately has religious roots. If you go back to the book of genesis, adam and even are instructed not to eat from the of the tree the knowledge of good and and disobeyed god and were kicked out of the garden of eden and thereafter human beings have a kind of intermediate moral status. They are not god and they dont have dignity they are also different than nature in the sense that they can sin in the fact that adam and eve made the wrong choice is in a way which characterizes the moral core of the human being and understand the difference between right and wrong. They oftentimes make the wrong choice but that makes them different than the rest of nature and ever since then liberalna societies have said tt human beings basically want to have that fundamental freedom, who to marry and where to live and what occupation to pursue, and that is a moral character that is fundamental to the dignity of human beings. If you ask almost any modern person and people use the word Human Dignity all the time and if you ask what constitutes Human Dignity and what grounds and i would say its fundamentally the ability to make moral choices. The final argument really have to do with economics because among theco fundamental rights that liberal regimes protect us the right to own private property, the right to transact, all protected by the rule of law that respects those Property Rights, protects the ability to transact and to make economic transactions. If you look historically across different kinds of societies the richest societies have always been potentially liberal ones that have protected Property Rights and that have a fundamental rule of law that creates the institutional framework within which a modern market economy can arise. This is true even in a place like china. When china opened up to the world in 1978 he gave up central planning. It began to allow ordinary citizens to an effect on private property to achieve the results of p their labor in china begano grow. It quadrupled its output in the next four years after the household responsibilities act was passed that allowed peasants to keep the surplus from their labor. In other words they deduced it into what had been the centrally planned system and thats the basis for china getting rich. And its a lot less liberal since the rise of xi jinping in 2013. But the prosperity of modern china is their adoption of a liberal understanding of Property Rights. I have not examines the economic miracle that they did. This is simply the latest in a whole series of economic success stories. Beginning with the netherlands, britain, other liberal societies were the pioneers would be first the commercial and then the revolutions because the ability to innovate and provide incentives to citizens to enrich themselves. It has produced a wealthy society. So those of the basic arguments in favor that i think are still very important. And necessary to keep in mind as of the question is why has liberalism come under attack as it has for both the right and the left . I wouldnt say most, but a surprising number of my students they do not describe themselves as a liberals for they feel liberal society has committed to many economic injustices, inequalities and liberal are too law at corrupting those but theres also a critique that comes from the right that such happy with the fact t that liberalism actually doesnt stop aib common goal for the whole society and tolerate different views of the good and that is religiously diverse, religious diversity and the like. I would say that the sharpest criticisms are not what i regard the core of classical liberalism, that assertion of the universal dignity of human beings it really has to do with extensions of liberal ideas into realms where they seize to make sense and they have counterproductive consequences theres a kind. Of symmetry because these extensions are both on the right and on the left. We begin with the ones on the right. It has to do with whats generally refer todaya neo liberalism. It is not capitalism per se. For some people, neoliberalism is a cynicism and much more restrictive definition that has to do withas the extension of market principles that is associated with economists like milton friedman, chicago school, counterproductive. It hurt economic efficiency and they havee argued for at across the board removal of the state from economic life. We society this period with politicians, Ronald Reagan margaret thatcher, Ronald Reagan, famously said, the scariest words hes ever were from the government. For many europeans culture historyy where the state became the enemy, overregulated disincentivized and the impact of this well, we have to be fair about this. Neo liberalism taken to a global level, output between the 1970s and early 2000s that created trade system that worked that way it should. Comparative advantage and youre able to trade, you can expand markets very dramatically and everybody gets rich. This is what happened in that period is what the trade theorists tended to under emphasize was not everybody in your society got rich as a result of this process. And in particular low skilled People Living at rich societies were likely to lose jobs and opportunities to similarly skilled people in poor countries. In 2001. The other thing was the whole mantra about taking the state out of the economy was applied in the wrong places. Particularly in the Financial Sector. The Financial Sector cannot regulate itself. Markets do not culminate they do not end in self regulation that protects the interest of society as a whole. We saw this from the sub crime prices at 2008 when banks were allowed to take excessive risks this is the culmination of a whole series of financial crises that began with the sterling crisis in the early 1990s. In the Asian Financial crisis, argentina, russia, a whole series of economies and blew up because of the Excessive Movement of liquidity from one part of the world to another. And in a way the peoplehood forbade the theory of globalization of neoliberal economists in the United States for a hoist on their own when it came to roost in that financial crisis. I think this has been well documented. The rising inequality that has occurred precisely in those countries that adopted these policies first, has exacerbated the feelings of class, conflict, and workingclass people been left behind. That in some way is at the root of the rise of populism. The second decade of the 21st century. That is neoliberalism on the right. Theres another distortion of liberalism on the left that you might label awoke liberalism. I think when a lot of people criticized liberalism they are not criticizing classical liberalism as i could find it. Theyre criticizing awoke liberalism. There are several aspects of this transformation of the way the left thought about inequality. So what defines a progressive is you do worry about social economic inequality. Want to per address that. In the 20th century that inequality was understood in broad class terms. A marxist believes the world is fundamentally divided between bourgeoisie and proletariat you need to equalize the outcomes might centralizing the memes of production and so forth in order to solve that problem. As we got to the end of the 20th century the sources of inequality came to be read to redefineda much narrower terms. It was no longer the inequality of big social groups are the proletarian but it came to center on narrower groups defined by race, ethnicity, gender and eventually inks like Sexual Orientation. Inequality was seen not as much necessarily as economic inequality but inequality of dignity for certain marginalized groups were not respectedthis tf focus mechanism for subsequent groups seeking social justice to fall into the same category of rights that needed to be corrected and used the same techniques like instead of relying on legislators, relying on courts in order to help achieve those equal outcomes. It involved in arguments over this for the last several years ever since i wrote a book called identity, whats wrong with identity politics and i want to be clear about something. There is a form of identity politics and an illiberal form of identity politics. I have no problem with of the liberal form. I would say it goes Something Like this. People are treated as members of groups, they are marginalized as members of groups. This is most true with African Americans simply on the basis of their skin color did not have equal rights in the liberal society if you are part of a group that has been mistreated you have every right in the world to mobilize on the basis of your common identities that is the source of your mistreatment and you enter the political system and make demands to treat you equally. That is the essence of Martin Luther kings civil rights movement. I look forward to the day when little black children will be treated the same as little white children so that is the plea for a marginalized group that organizes on the basis of in identity category to basically demand equal rights to enter into that same liberal society. And a liberal form is when that identity category becomes a centralized meaning that its the most important thing anyone can know about you, your skin color, gender, Sexual Orientation and that membership in a group will trump anything you accomplish as an individual, that is an ill liberal form of identity politics and thats the part of the politics that i think becomes very problematic in a liberal society and you give out jobs, places and universities promotions and of alike simply on the basis of those identity categories that violates this fundamental liberal principle that we regard people in the society as individuals. We may judge them on their individual characteristics and skills, talent, accumulated abilities and natural abilities. If you treat people simply as members of groups you are violating that underlining premise and that is ill liberal. Theres a lot of ways that this can go in terms of the way people are treated. I think that theres a big controversy right now over things like cancel culture or woke culture but i would say in general, and ive argued of this this inmany different forms theg argument that i keep having is how broad and fundamental is this because a lot of conservatives would argue that we are living under a woke tyranny where every institution and the society is dominated by these identity categories and if you violate the kind of politically correct attitude towards those categories, youre going to be canceled. From my point of view this is not the america i experienced. I think first of all these identity categories do apply to a certain relatively narrow set of issues related to civil rights and related to essentially race, sex, ethnicity, Sexual Orientation and the like and that we continue to enjoy liberal freedoms and almost every other regard so you can say whatever you want about President Biden or a candidate donald trump and nobody is going to put you in jail. I think people think that we are living under a liberal tierney and ought to go live in a country like russia or china where you cannot make political statements that contravene those by the authorities. So in that respect there is i think a hierarchy and certain priority of liberal rights of which things like freedom of speech, freedom of association, this ability to speak out on political issues is important and is being eroded by certain parts of the Progressive Left but i dont think that it is a general characteristic of the society as a whole but that is something that we can argue about. The other thing that has been going on does have to do with that second characteristic of liberalism that has to do with autonomy and the understanding of human autonomy this is the thing that gave human beings dignity in the eyes of god and had to do with of the ability to make basic choices, but those choices were ones that determined not by human beings, but by god. They existed in a moral framework that they themselves did not invent and moral judgments of them would be made concerning the way they lived up to these imposed rules and that is the essence of lets say Martin Luthers basic christian freedom. It has expanded pretty relentlessly so that by the time at the end of the 19th century he creates this character who is free because not only does he have the ability to obey the law or not, he can make up the law himself and create the moral framework and this is what leads to what is sometimes labeled expressive individualism where the individuality expands all the way to your ability to establish the rules under which you are living and obviously you cant have a society if this is the case because what is a society if shared rules that allow collective action that allow people to live peacefully with one another and if everybody gets to make up their own rules, thats not going to happen. This expansion of the realm of autonomy has been growing over time. Some of it is actually abetted by changes in technology, so for example if you think about Something Like gender equality, a division of labor between men and women made sense in the Hunter Gatherer Society and in many respects industrial societies because the ability to do useful work depended on Upper Body Strength and ability to lift heavy objects and this sort of thing, when you go through the kind of soci