Quote of the Day

“This then was the ultimate goal of totalitarianism: not simply to deprive the new Soviet man of his freedom, but to make him fear freedom in favor of security, and to affirm the goodness of his chains even in the absence of coercion.”

People like author Francis Fukuyama make my head hurt. Not in that John Cougar Mellencamp “make it hurt so good” kind of way; more in that “someone is using a jackhammer on my brain” sort of thing.

Fukuyama’s The End of History and the Last Man is one of the most engaging and informative non-fiction books I’ve read on political history. I’d sum up the book myself, but I’m feeling lazy, read the book years ago, and stumbled upon a review on goodreads.com that does a nice job of simplifying an otherwise big book.

Per the goodreads reviewer known only as Hadrian:

“[Fukuyama] does start off with the bold assertion that liberal-capitalist-democracy is the end point of history, but uses the rest of his chapters to back off from this assertion into a more tepid series of observations.

He does not support liberal-capitalist-democracy from a moral grounding, but instead notes its ability to survive and continue to reproduce itself after repeated economic crises, and its ability to outlast other alternatives from the far-right (fascism), and the far-left (communism). Its status as part of the end of history is taken from Hegel, interpreted by Kojeve and a bit of Kant. Fukuyama draws on these to say that the overall ‘meaning’ of history itself, or at least the general trend of it, leads to the continued spread of liberal-capitalist-democracy, and its perceived effectiveness in allowing the individual to act and express according to their own personal liberties in a universal, if homogeneous, state.

Despite this, it is still easy to pick apart his argument. The greatest possible drawback is that the historical conditions which led to the spread of liberal-capitalist-democracy might not necessarily continue into the 21st century and beyond. A chief example among these is the economic catastrophe of 2007, and how many have perceived this international system has being unable to meet the needs of its citizens.”

Now, if Mr. Fukuyama were to create some new idioms in the context of the current political climate in Washington, I imagine he might come up with one or more of the following zingers:

• If it ain’t broke, don’t trump it.
• You don’t be down with my there interpret of the constitutions, you be don with the wind.
• My hair, my hair! My kingdom for my hair!
• I vanka answer your question, dumbass, but I also vanka get me a piece of *$%&.
• My mind thinks alike, small minds are for the (mostly immigrant) peons.
• Be the change you will force on the world.
• Money is the root of which all trees grow across America. Except in the blue states, where they grow on fake news, corruption, “facts,” liars, despicable people, evil lifestyles and rational intercourse (sic)