/lit/ - Literature

>>23054042
I thought the book was well-reasoned and it helped convert me to liberalism.. all the other systems are depraved trash..

>>23054042
Fukuyama needs to go back and read Hegel instead of just Kojeve's deflationary take. The "Last Man" problem he diagnosed with laudable prescience in "The End of History," shows that there remains significant contradictions in the system. Some form of static liberalism cannot be "returned to," or maintained. He wrongly has liberal democracy "defeating" socialism and fascism. It didn't; it sublated them. Core planks of both socialism and nationalism are now endemic to all liberal states. The dialectical engine churns on.

The state of equilibrium described in the Philosophy of Right, the total harmony of all individual's social welfare functions, the identify of the individual with the whole, has obviously not been attained yet. It's a mistake to miss that Hegel's vision is as harmonious as Plato's in The Republic, just more dynamic.

That said, I did really like Fukuyama's two volumes on stage development. It isn't ground breaking but it's a great summation and fair treatment of all preceding theories of state development.

>>23054378
Liberalism is indeed the way to go, in at least key aspects, but it's important to note that it is contradictory and so undermines itself. The "over production," of people with advanced degrees, the inability to deal with global issues due to a focus on the "sovereignty of nations and peoples," mass migration and the global inequality that drives it, the focus on consumption over human flourishing, the valuation of income over all else, etc. all flow from the traits of modern liberalism. The greatest threats to liberalism are manufactured by it. It is an organism whose metabolic processes are making its environment unliveable; it must evolve or die. It must sublate.

At the intellectual/cultural level this is true as well. The post-modernist attacks on truth, the materialism that leads to the denial of the existence of the human person in striving to reduce all reality to mathematical physics, the denial of virtue as a meaningful concept, and the reduction of ethics to emotivism all flow from liberalism.

Liberalism needs on the one hand to radically progress in terms of economic and political organization, and on the other hand to turn back to the sounder intellectual grounding of the medievals and ancients as respects many aspects of philosophy.

>>23054499
Fukuyama’s argument in this book is that liberalism has completed the dialectic but some bad actors are unreasonably stretching it beyond its limits and are causing issues. He concludes the book saying that we need moderation in order to salvage the current situation. He is completely unconvincing in every way, hardly ever outlining a productive path forward for liberalism instead plays defense and reiterates what it stands for repeatedly.

What you say about liberalism needing to evolve and utilize what it has sublated is probably true but liberalism is not interested in that right now. It’s utterly stagnant and this book is an example of it. The current leader of the liberal order is a fucking senile retard who can barely speak right and they’re running this guy against the person they deem an existential threat to liberalism. That tells you everything about where we’re at in history.

>>23054478
>The "Last Man" problem he diagnosed with laudable prescience in "The End of History," shows that there remains significant contradictions in the system
the whole point of democratic republics by the bourgeois is that they are inherently contradictory: they say morality and truth don't exist, yet they are adamant to impose their views on the population. they want their democratic republics to be the normative implementation of their dogmatic fantasy of universalism, while at the same time imposing the dogma of individualism which they created so that the bourgeois would no longer be subjugated to he kings and priests.
They tell the peasants to live victoriously through their republic, while at the same time remaining a bureaucratic and mercantile caste in order to keep the control of their republic.

>>23054499
>>Liberalism needs on the one hand to radically progress in terms of economic and political organization, and on the other hand to turn back to the sounder intellectual grounding of the medievals and ancients as respects many aspects of philosophy.
Democracy is working at indented : bureaucrats sit officially at the top of the democratic hierarchy. Merchants are officially just below them, and the populace is at the bottom but it ''has power because every 5 years it votes for a bureaucrats''. There is no longer any king or priests which has power and the class system of feudalism is indeed formally illegal, exactly what the revolutionists wanted.
The appearances are safe.
And in reality the merchants and bureaucrats are mostly the same people and sit at the top. And the populace has no bearing on their ruling.


As a bonus, the atheist democracies can't have any explicit manager being responsible (and towards who anyway? like, bureaucrats have created lots and lots of rules harming the general population, and yet none of them was put in their own prison, whereas as soon as a bureaucrat thinks a non-migrant peasant broke the bureaucratic rules, he goes to prison and he has his money taken lol. The worst thing that can happen to a bureaucrat is that he doesnt get re-elected or he has to resign and use his network to go in the private sector or get a hidden job in the public bureaucracy).
That's the benefit of sitting at the top.

>>23054815
Maybe you are using "bureaucrat" differently, but you do realize that career bureaucrats aren't particularly well paid or individually powerful, right? Senior management in federal departments is all political appointees, which means they tend to be well connected, wealthy elites from outside the government who only serve for a single president's term. To be sure, there are some career bureaucrats who manage to be appointed by alternating parties, but this is more and more rare as the parties separate on issues. In general, the leaders are all coming out of the private sector or sitting in academia when their party is out of power.

Career bureaucrats have some control over policy in that political appointees often don't even understand the agencies they are sent in to run initially, and the career people are the ones who actually know how to run things, but they ultimately are tasked with doing what appointees say and are very poorly compensated compared to comparable private sector jobs, which is why some many bureaucrats leave for the private sector after reaching the upper ranks.

At the state level this is also true. If anything, appointees often tend to dominate even more. The only obvious deviation from this would be at the local level in places where professional city/county managers are hired to be executives. But these people often act far more impartially, less politically, and more pragmatically than people who are elected or appointed.

So basically, it seems to misunderstand our system to say that "bureaucrats" rule at the top. Rather, career elected officials, a different class, and their appointees, rule, and they are very often not involved in government for all that are. That is, in the US at least, a large part of the dysfunction comes from the fact that there are fewer and fewer "career" leaders. Rather, we have a shifting cast, often with very little relevant experience. Unsurprisingly, this leads to bad government.

What you said would have been much more true of the US in the 40s-60s, or even in the 1990s, where different parties would keep the same leaders in place. It rarely happens now, last big example was Obama keeping Bush's Sec Def Gates, and Gates was a clear example of the less partisan "consunate professional," type that has died in this partisan enviornment. Particularly in the House, lots of leaders cast themselves as outsiders, pulling protest stunts all the time rather than leading. Donors have also become way more powerful as party control atrophies.

The modern US is more a case of no one leading that some cabal securing all power. It's chaos.

I hate libtards
>>23055649
The entire government is made up of career bureaucrats. The entire government is just one huge bureaucracy, the head of state is a largely meaningless position.

>>23055892
>>23055892
>I hate libtards

You mean you hate having your simplistic world view where there is a nice, easy to understand manichean unity to decry. It is not true that "the entire government is made of career bureaucrats," all senior positions are appointees. Many appointees have never worked in government before or only worked there briefly. Serving 2-4 years in a positions after spending 2-3 decades outside the government is not a "career."

>>23054042
Anything interesting in that book felt like just a rehash of "End of History". Just more desperate like you said. He is the first liberal I have seen talk about the fact that the right is starting to utilising post-modernism now. That was kind of neat. Even if it was mostly just to complain about anti-vaxxers and I think election deniers. Also very funny that he mentions Ukraine as being very curropt, only for the the book come out shortly after the war started.

The think that always for me in "End of History" is he goes on about how internal contradictions will bring down a system as those contradictions cause more and more problems, only to acknowledge liberty vs equality will come into conflict in this system. But he then handwaved it away as something each country can find their own personal happy medium compromise on the issue. Had he committed on that observation he could have predicted a lot of the problems liberalism is facing right now

>>23055905
Sure it is. If you have a 20 year career in education administration, then go to the government getting paid on the Executive Schedule (starts at 180k year) or GS-13 (really the lowest real bureaucrat on General Schedule - 117k starting in DC area) working at the Department of Education you are continuing you career. When you're appointment is done you've gained status which is important for you career. But, you've also gained regulatory experience and connections which are extremely valuable in the private sector. There's a reason why feds with that type of experience and high motivation end up being consultants and continuing their careers in the private sector.

>>23054042
Didn't read his book.
I'm a former liberal (in the Classical sense). Can't understand how anyone can be a liberal nowadays considering what kind of society liberalism has led to.

>>23056136
What would you prefer? China, the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany?

>>23056771
Maybe Singapore.
But liberalism clearly isn't leading to a healthy society.

>>23056800
Lee Kwan Yew > any of the founding fathers of America

>>23056136
You could consider what other societies look like. There is a reason millions of people leave everything and risk life and limb to flee to the degenerate West. Millions of Russians have fled Russia for the OECD. Millions of Arabs have left for the West. Westerns rarely move to these places because they are shit.

>>23056771
>le liberalism is le more humane than its competitors
Holy shit, are you from like, 1999?

>>23057268
That has everything to do with economics, infrastructure, and convenience, and nothing to do with the cultures and societies themselves. And no, liberalism spread in the west because the west was economically successful, it wasn't economically successful because the west became liberal.

>>23054042
Didn't Fukuyama fumble the etymology of deontology in an embarrassing way in this book? Or was that another one of his?
>mfw deontology = de-ontology

>>23057299
Yes.
People are not moving to the West because of gender ideology or anything of this kind.
They are moving due to the higher wealth in the West, which is a heritage of the "old Christians" that are so hated by modern liberal West.

>>23057334
Virtually no one is leaving the West because of muh gender bullshit either though. Money talks, bullshit walks. You Chud's just whine about it because you're the losers of society. No one else pays campus retards any mind. There arent that many of them.

>"B-but this Black or that woman is more successful than me!"
Yes, because you are chaff. You grew up in a middle class white household and were told you were special all your life. You aren't. Again, money talks, bullshit walks. You have no one to blame but yourself. All you're capable of is raging online or shooting up grocery stores in impotent rage. Sucks to suck.

Liberalism will never die but Chud's genetic lines will, lol.

>>23057286
>Using le unironically
Go back

>>23057541
Provide evidence that people move to liberal societies for liberalism and not money

>>23058412
he's going to say something about civil war or strongmen and just ignore that the progressivism utterly disgusts them. also never mind that USG hasn't done much to actually preserve stability itself, unless stability is defined as executing/torturing people who don't follow liberalism.

>>23056136
I personally advocate for a private law society

>>23054042
Francis Fukumean

>>23054042
As a rule, with almost no exceptions, I do not read books which play on the titles of more famous works in a lazy effort to get extra sales.

>>23056800
>Singapore
Never understood why some "conservatives" have such a hard-on for this multicultural shithole. Because it whips criminals? You can get your sadomasochistic kicks at a leather club

>>23054042
Liberalism failed when provided explanations of social topics. It's not very well thought out and everyone just jumps on the bandwagon to be apart of the "in crowd" for diversity ect it seems.

>>23054378
But liberalism is dying

>>23058971
People said that in the 1930s too.

>>23055905
>you mean you-
I think he means he hates libtards, mate

>>23058429
The civil wars in other countries are started by the heckin moral and free liberal countries
See Timber Sycamore, invasion of afghanistan, iran-contra affair

>>23058975
it was dying then too but FDR's intervention into ww2 saved it. now that western governments openly despise their own people and all the manipulation of the 20th century + GWOT have been made clear, do you really think fighting age males are gonna bother with ww3? if they try a conscription, a second american revolution will start.

>>23058975
In the 1930s everyone was white, Christian, modern and patriotic. The liberal west manufactured everything it consumed. The government made up less than 20% of the economy.
Today everyone is postmodern, demoralised, degenerate and mutted. We are broke and we rely on socialist countries to make our things and bail us out. We are even more deeply divided and our elites hate the people and ignore them. The government makes up over 40% of the economy.

>>23058914
Classic projection here from a a Maoist

>>23059020
This. America rode to the rescue of liberal democracy against both fascism and communism. If America itself falls to fascism or imperial monarchy, which nation that currently exists is both strong enough to defeat a fallen America and actually cares about preserving liberal democracy?

>>23059046
Nobody wants to preserve it. Its a gay failure.

>>23058914
Why revert to such a baseless claim about punishment being inherently tied to sexual pleasure? It's an imposition of power, surely, but tying it to sexuality is only indicative of a certain jewry in the mind and soul. I desperately hope you're not that, anon.

>>23059379
There is something carnal about people who are full of enthusiasm about corporal punishment. Even if it is not sexual, it is a form of cupidity: delight in the physical suffering of other people.

Things are quite good.
We have Marvel movies, Funko Pops. Onlyfans allow you to have nice friendships with beautiful women. LGBT people can be themselves.

>>23060207
Maybe you’re saying this as a joke but this is verbatim the primary defense for liberalism among all liberals.

>>23056800
>liberalism clearly isn't leading to a healthy society
Liberalism, leftism and the industrial revolution are the reasons for the decadence of society.

>>23056061
>180k/yr
>after 20 years of experience
lol. lmao even. mid-level engineers knock down more than that. private sector executives make millions, plus stock options, plus free transportation and food, plus discounted mortgage rates (if not outright free housing). if you're bitching about some 50 year old boomer making the same salary that any 28 year old FAGMAN programmer makes, you're delusional about who really has power.

>>23054042
He wrote this just to save face from his last book, that's why. He was extremely overconfident in The End of History and it aged extremely poorly. As it's his main claim to fame, he's basically become an embodied laughingstock, so he had to write this to basically be like "no I'm actually still right you just need to squint"

>>23060415
liberalism is about to collapse bros... two more weeks...

>>23060418
I didn't say it would collapse, just that it hasn't lead to the outcomes he predicted either globally or internally. Every liberal society is experiencing societal ills he said would be alleviated through it, and rather than the spread of liberal democracies, faith in them is on the steady decline globally.

>>23060422
Fair enough

Republican/democratic backsliding has been a thing for fucking centuries and his "end of history" sensationalist bullshit take was so incredibly bad I can't take him seriously at all.

>>23054478
The difference between liberalism, Bolshevism, and fascism isn't just in the content of their "doctrines," but in their fundamental understandings of health. The Bolshevik idea of health stems from French sensationalist materialism of the 18th century, which, unlike the other major strain of 18th century political thought (classical republican virtue ethics, from which fascism ultimately stems), assumes that people are only as good as the state and economy "makes" them. People are like like Descartes' wax, totally featureless other than their ability to receive and bear the impress of some outside influence.

Note I say Bolshevik here, not communism. Marx's own understanding of communism, despite being tainted by his own French materialist tendencies, ultimately stemmed from the same classical virtue ethics as fascism. Bolshevism is just bourgeois biopolitical social constructionism, it's a product of the same profound cynicism about man that made the "liberal" regimes of the 20th century act indistinguishably from totalitarian states while cynically justifying themselves in the name of 19th century progressivist optimism.

Of the three, only fascism maintains the old classical virtue ethics: make man strong, make the state healthy and sane, imbue the citizens with sophrosyne and arete, and then we can tackle any problem, even without knowing what that problem is, at least insofar as any human being could ever tackle ANY problem. We don't know what history will throw at us, but it is obviously in our best interest to be AWAKE when it comes our way. Liberalism and Bolshevism both put their citizens to sleep to avoid panic and general anarchy, because ultimately they know they are just "regimes," they have nothing to offer the citizens in return for their loyalty. Fascism, the third position, is the only one to offer a dialectical relationship between whole and parts in which neither are sacrificed to the other, aka an organism or holism, which is why fascism is often associated with corporativism (from corpus, a body made of distinct but coordinated and integrated parts), integralism and organicism (self-explanatory).

So what happens if fascism "wins?" Well, states and peoples (Völker), what Heidegger calls natural collective formations or instances of Dasein, will "be secure in their own houses." Does this mean that they'll live in eternal peace and harmony? Probably not, but at least the great world-historical "nations" of the earth (however defined) will then be able to deal with each other honestly and as equals, instead of under the aegis of the coercive, cynical, sham internationalism of Bolshevism and American pseudo-liberalism. Brothers quarrel but they are still brothers. Dugin has a very developed perspective on this, whatever you want to say about his other views.

>>23060461
Dugin simply hates the West. It's not that deep.