None of this, Fukuyama suggests, is liberalism’s own fault. 142) are clearly the ‘more immediate and political’ threats (p.
Attacks on democracy and diversity from ‘populists’ and ‘ethno-nationalists’ (p. Modern left-wing identity politics, with its emphasis on shared experiences and collective struggle, brings with it a plethora of valid complaints against classical liberalism which are then also ‘carried to unsupportable extremes’ (p. But the real threats to liberalism are from left-wing and right-wing forms of rebellion. Neoliberalism, with its demonization of the state and its privileging of private property above all else, is a perversion of liberalism ‘carried to extremes’ (p. Liberal ideology is best understood, he suggests, as a ‘way of regulating violence’, a philosophy in defence of ‘basic human dignity’ and ‘autonomy’, and when implemented, a stimulus for ‘economic growth’ (p. xiii).įukuyama succinctly discusses liberalism’s evolution and, more significantly, the critiques most commonly arrayed against it.
Dismayed by the multiple threats to liberalism’s dwindling ascendancy, Fukuyama strives to show that this European philosophy remains ‘superior to the illiberal alternatives’ on offer (p. Against this backdrop, Francis Fukuyama’s Liberalism and its Discontents is an unambiguous (though not unqualified) defence of liberalism, written in the wake of the Trump Presidency and its conflagration in January 2021.
The United States Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v Wade, the re-emergence of high inflation, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine have given liberal intellectuals pause for thought. It is particularly timely to be reading and thinking about contemporary liberalism. Women’s rights protest outside of the US Supreme Court in the wake of the Roe vs. Joshua Black reviews Francis Fukuyama’s Liberalism and its Discontents (Profile 2022).
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