Fukuyama's foolishness

Francis Fukuyama writes in the 'American Purpose'-

One of the staples of my teaching of comparative politics over the years was to point out the differences between European and American conservatives.

Americans thought McCarthy was one cool dude. JFK, Richard Nixon and Roy Cohn got their start under the auspices of HUAC. European Conservatives believed that being cultured was to be un-American.  

The former were generally comfortable with the exercise of state power,

while the latter objected to the Government killing indigenous people and grabbing their land- thinks nobody at all.  

and indeed sought to use power to enforce religious or cultural values (the old unity of “throne and altar.”)

America enforced racial values- e.g. the 'one drop' rule. Obviously, a country without a King or an Established Church isn't going to gas on about 'throne and altar'.  

American conservatives, on the other hand, were different in their emphasis on individual liberty, a small state, property rights, and a vigorous private sector.

All of which Europeans were cool with- more particularly if they were eligible to pay taxes to fund big government. 

It is a separate matter that the Catholic Church promoted 'Corporatism' or that some Protestant sects began to believe in a 'Social Gospel' which was associated with the ideas of Henry George. 

In Seymour Martin Lipset’s account of American exceptionalism, American politics were thoroughly imbued with a Lockean liberalism that saw the government limiting its own power through a strict rule of law.

America had a 'spoils system'. Andrew Jackson may have worsened the underlying problem but the thing already existed.  

These principles defined the Republican Party under Ronald Reagan, which wanted lower taxes, deregulation, federalism, and multiple limits on state power.

Carter was a deficit hawk.  Reagan went in the opposite direction. The truth is some Democrats were conservative and some Republicans- e.g. Rockefeller- were rather liberal on many social issues. In the post-bellum South, some Whigs called themselves Conservative while in New York in the Seventies and Eighties, Conservatives caucused with Republicans. 

This understanding of conservatism has now been upended with the rise of Trumpist populism.

But Trump has belonged to different parties at different times. Look at the fellow's hair! It doesn't exactly scream 'conservative', does it?  

Trump himself was perfectly comfortable with big government spending, promising to protect entitlements and approving a huge Covid relief package even as he cut taxes.

He wasn't so different from Reagan in that respect.  

He was happy to use the Justice Department to go after his enemies,

like Nixon. But neither Reagan nor Nixon (the first and last Keynesian President) were seen as conservative as opposed to (in Reagan's case) 'as old as fuck' or (in Nixon's) 'crazier than a shithouse rat'.  

and chafed at the restrictions on police powers in putting down protests in the wake of the George Floyd killing in 2020.

He got political mileage from that.  Reagan benefitted greatly from the Watts riots. 

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has in recent months been trying to outdo Trump in his willingness to deploy the state to combat “woke” values.

Florida has the largest percentage of elderly people- some 21 percent of voters. Also Cuban-Americans and other Catholics tend to be more socially conservative. 

He has sought to take control of education materials at multiple levels, attempting to ban gender studies and critical race theory in state universities, and singled out the Disney Company—Florida’s largest employer—for punishment because it was too woke.

Disney had previously got a special tax status and various other perks.  

These actions were framed not in terms of general rules for corporations in Florida, but punitive actions applying to a single company.

Which had been given specially favorable terms. What the Legislature gives, the Legislature can take away.  

Following the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade last summer, conservatives in a number of red states have launched initiatives to tighten anti-abortion rules, criminalizing the actions of both providers and women having abortions, and trying to extend the reach of these prohibitions beyond the red states where they are legislatively approved.

There are plenty of 'right to Life' Democrats. Biden himself probably doesn't like the thing. Trump may have very different ideas but keeps quiet about it. 

Conservative intellectuals have been trying to come up with a coherent justification for strong-state populist policies.

Why bother? The whole point about being a 'conservative intellectual' is that you want to come across as a bug-eyed lunatic who has plenty of Ak-47s in his storm cellar. What you don't want to do is sound like Noam Chomsky more particularly if you dress like him.

Patrick Deneen

good Irish name if ever I heard one 

has attacked the liberal project root and branch in his book Why Liberalism Failed, pointing to John Locke himself as the mistaken point at which Western thought turned away from religiously-defined (or what he calls “teleological”) political authority.

The English should never have cut off King Charles's head. Also James II was a good bloke, once you got to know him.  

He has also called for a conservative rethinking of its embrace of the private sector and capitalism.

Fair point. 'Wokeness' costs money which is why it is a good 'barrier to entry' reducing competition for existing dominant firms.  

Catholic integralists like Harvard Law Professor Adrian Vermeule

a convert who must hate the present Pope 

have been open in their support for a more hierarchical system that would substantively define the “common good” in place of liberalism’s agnosticism about final ends.

Liberalism is a house with many mansions. There is a gnostic Liberalism which, I believe, offers us a promised land where everybody gets free gender re-assignment surgery every other week.  

Finally, there has been a lot of open admiration expressed for strongman leadership and authoritarian government.

Whereas people secretly admire weak leaders and governments which have zero authority.  

Rod Dreher moved to Budapest and sees Viktor Orbán’s Hungary as a model for the United States, while Tucker Carlson spent a week broadcasting from there.

Clearly, both had lost their marbles. Hungary has a population of less that ten million. It is a small place which will always be somewhat parochial and concerned with maintaining a distinct Magyar identity.  

Donald Trump in a recent interview effusively praised Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, and Kim Jong Un, all of whom were very “smart” and effective leaders.

Trump is saying that he is smart and effective and could do deals with the three people he names.  

He has made various proposals for using violence and summary judgments against drug dealers and wants to round up homeless people and put them in special camps.

Mr. Garrison was more moderate. He merely wanted to round up all Mexicans and fuck 'em to death.  

Other conservatives have expressed admiration for El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele (including Senator Marco Rubio), a democratically elected leader who has used extrajudicial means to round up tens of thousands of gang members.

That is a different matter. Exigent circumstances may force a less developed country down that road. 

Make no mistake: this is not your grandfather’s conservatism. American conservatives are now talking more like older European ones

which ones? Churchill? They should be so lucky.  

—not like, say, the German Christian Democrats, who today are in many ways to the left of the Democratic Party, but older ones like Spain’s Francisco Franco

a General

or Portugal’s Antonio Salazar

an economist- or 'technocrat'. Conservatism in Europe was about land-owing aristocrats, not guys who worked for a living.  

who were happy to see democracy abolished in their countries altogether.

In Portugal, this was because the Liberals who abolished the monarchy were utterly useless. In Spain, the Left spent a lot of time raping nuns till Franco turned up and his Morisco soldiers raped everybody- except nuns who were suitably grateful.   

There is plenty to criticize on the woke Left, but this new type of conservative is not talking about rolling back particular policies; they are challenging the very premises of the liberal state

which 'liberal state' would that be? The one which committed genocide or the one which thought 'Operation Wetback' was a dynamite idea?  

and toying with outright authoritarianism.

Are they using it as an anal dildo? That's totes uncool.  

They are not simply deluded by lies about the 2020 election, but willing to accept non-democratic outcomes to get their way.

Whereas the Dems were very happy to see Trump become President.  

And they are providing ample support for a broad retreat in foreign policy away from liberal internationalism towards isolationism.

Biden is more isolationist than Trump.  

This type of authoritarian-adjacent conservatism was always present at the fringes of American politics, but was successfully marginalized in the period after 1945.

Nonsense! McCarthyism was authoritarian-adjacent and not at all marginal.  

What is puzzling is why it is taking over one of the two major U.S. political parties at this particular juncture in history.

Whites don't want to become a minority in the US. What's so fucking puzzling about that?  

The new illiberal conservatives talk about an “existential” crisis in American life: how the United States as traditionally understood will simply disappear under pressure from the woke Left, which then justifies extreme measures in response.

The good news is that most darker complected peeps hate the woke Left. 

To the contrary, it is hard to think of a time when the United States has been more free than it is in 2023. The much-feared tyranny of the woke Left exists only in certain limited sectors of U.S. society—universities, Hollywood, and other cultural spaces,

So, the tyranny of the woke Left is not a myth. It actually exists. Thus, it is rational to try to prevent it spreading. 

and it only touches on certain issues related to race, ethnicity, gender, and sexual identity.

What about Soros funded District Attorneys who won't prosecute criminals? What price New York Mayor, Eric Adams, paying hotels 300 dollars a night to house asylum seekers? Taxes will have to go up or other programs will have to be cut. Most voters are also tax payers. Wokeness costs money.  

It can be bad in these spaces, but most Americans don’t live there. People on the right are able to practice their religion, criticize the government, and attack their fellow citizens as never before.

But they don't want to pay for 'forever wars' or 300 dollars a night to house anybody who can sneak into the country. 

It is the anti-woke Right and not the woke Left that is seeking to use state power to limit individual freedoms.

Like the freedom to shop-lift without fearing a jail sentence. The trouble is that stores either raise prices or shut down. The law-abiding populace loses out.  

In a debate a couple of years ago, I asked Patrick Deneen why he thought America had become such a tyrannical place, and he pointed to an order of Catholic sisters who were being compelled to provide services for gay couples.

Catholic nuns should be beating the shit out of little kids not servicing gay couples.  

The rights and wrongs of this particular case are debatable. But if Deneen thinks this is tyranny, he might want to move to Russia or China where he can experience the real thing.

How fucking stupid is Fukuyama? Does he not understand that a guy against tyranny won't want to experience it in a more intense form. Also, in the old days if you were talking a Lefty, you said 'if you hate Capitalism so much, why don't you move to the Soviet Union?' You didn't say 'if you love Atheistic Communism why don't you move to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia?' 

I suppose what Fukuyama meant to say was 'if Deneen had lived in Russia or China, he would not speak of 'woke tyranny' in this country'. But there are plenty of American citizens who lived in the Soviet Union or Communist China and were very glad to escape to America. Many would be inclined to agree with Deneen that the agenda Soros and the 'woke Left' is pushing is indeed in the direction of tyranny. But America isn't China or Russia. It is a country where lots of people have lots of guns. It also has a constitutional doctrine of 'dual sovereignty'. Moreover, as America returns to isolationism, the Federal Government will be pruned back. America will go in the direction of subsidiarity and 'Tiebout sorting'- i.e. local governments competing by offering different fiscal mixes appealing to different population segments. This will go hand in hand with the appropriate identity political gestures. 

This does not represent a scandal for Liberalism. Tiebout models merely represent a type of freedom of association. If it pays for itself, why should we care?