Fukuyama Visits Yale
By Dan Gelernter
This Monday (the 10th) I attended a lecture by Francis Fukuyama, the well known former neo-con and author of “The End of History and the Last Man”. Professor Fukuyama now believes that neo-conservatism is dying, and that it led the Bush administration to a number of incorrect decisions which in turn led to the current situation in Iraq, which Fukuyama is not satisfied with. (He did say in answer to a question, though, that he did not see an alternative course of action to the one the current administration is taking.)
The outstanding point of Fukuyama’s address was a single remark that revealed the extend to which he’s diverged from the conservatives he once agreed with. Fukuyama paraphrased what I believe was an article written by Irving Kristol for Commentary (a magazine Fukuyama used to write for). Kristol had written something along the lines of, “the world will acknowledge that America’s actions are correct because American foreign policy is morally superior to other countries’ foreign policy.” Some people in the audience snickered, but not enough: Fukuyama added, “You’re supposed to laugh at that.” And with a short chuckle from the crowd, he left us in no doubt that what we were supposed to laugh at was the silly supposition that America is morally superior to other countries.
But it is precisely the feeling that America is not morally superior that leads to disaster. When America has, as Lincoln put it, “firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right” we can defeat any enemy. No country could dream of defeating the United States militarily – the Vietnamese knew that it was a physiological question: could they make enough people think that what America was doing wasn’t morally right? They did – and we lost. But America was right in Vietnam, and she is right now. In trying to convince Americans that there is nothing morally good or superior about America, or that we are just as prone to perpetrating great atrocities and ethical disasters as any other country on the map, you are committing a crime. You are helping to defeat your country.
Professor Fukuyama’s speech wasn’t substantial. It was, however, remarkable in light of the fact that in 1997 he was one of the signers of a letter to President Clinton, urging him to remove “Saddam's regime from power.” He later signed an even stronger September 20, 2001 letter to President Bush that says that Saddam must be removed, “even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the attack.” He’s changed his mind, and seems to expect praise – for sticking solidly to one side of the issue until it appears to him that it’s loosing.
Part II: Question Time!
There were eight questions asked – all of which, apparently, had been prepared for in advance, as questioners came down on cue to either one of a pair of microphones stationed on opposing sides of the lecture hall. Seven of the questions were so heavily leftist that it took considerable strength of stomach to stick them out. The first question was one of the most infantile I have heard, though a young Yale student managed to ask it with a straight face. Professor Fukuyama, said the student, was an intellectually brave man and his book was certainly an excellent work. Nevertheless, when the student discovered that Fukuyama had contributed to Scooter Libby’s legal defense fund on the grounds of being his friend, the student’s feelings were deeply damaged: “I was really hurt.”
The student went on for five minutes about this, and was even reminded by the moderator that he was asking a question, not making a speech. In Fukuyama’s place I’d have told the fellow what he could do with his feelings, but Fukuyama calmly responded that his friend had been indicted for perjury, that there is no presumption that he is guilty from the start, and that it will cost him a lot to defend himself from prosecutors with infinite budgets.
The questions managed to get worse, however. One man asked a “question” that was really just a statement of personal disbelief: back in the 60s, there were “war criminals” in American government and that’s why he dodged the draft. But now “with my teenage son sitting next to me” we still have “war criminals” in power – like Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz.
There was also a question from an anti-Semitic arab on the Palestine issue, and then my favorite question of all:
“Do you think that America will attack Iran within the next year? Do you think that they will use nuclear weapons, and, if they do, would such an attack be sane or insane?”
I would advise the questioner to investigate his own sanity before he goes around picking on other peoples’.
The entire experience proved to be enlightening in an unexpected way. What happens when you’re presented with such magnificent collection of people who refuse to (or are incapable of) thinking? Perhaps it’s just ‘the end of history’ catching up with us.
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In general, however, a conservative foreign policy would recognize that man is fallible, that the United States probably doesn't know everything about government, and that even if it did, it is certainly not prudent to try to force the rest of the world to follow in our footsteps.
Back to the question of culture. To be honest, do we really think that we have a culture of "moral superiority?" I think conservatives would say that the radical autonomy in our culture leads simply to enslavement to the passions, that a culture of abortion is probably not one we want to export, and that our culture prescribes little that contributes to human flourishing.
So there are two questions here. How much do we want the world to follow after America? And what does a realistic foreign policy tell us about our ability to force our culture upon others?
E-mail me at peter.johnston@yale.edu if you would like to make a submission.
I think Mr. Johnson is missing a few key points here. I'll address his second question first:
The US government is not engaging in 'interventionalist' foreign policy for the primary purpose of converting other countries into American-style democracies. The war on terror is not some grand experiment in societal engineering. We chose to go into Iraq and Afghanistan to eliminate real threats to our national security in a post-9/11 world.
Once we had achieved our military goals in those nations, the next logical step was to help replace their ousted despotic regimes with some form representative government. Is this a bad thing? Our purpose was not to "force" anything on anyone. No one coerced the Iraq people into risking their lives and voting by the millions. They defied the terrorists and voted on their own volition because they wanted to shape the future of their own country.
In regards to the first point, every society has major flaws. Some of ours are the glorification of instant gratification and the legality of abortion on demand. These blemishes, however, do not poison the well of American exceptionalism as a whole.
Ours is a nation in which law-abiding men and women of all races and creeds have the opportunity to get an education and create a prosperous life for themselves and their families--with limited governmental interference. People can speak their minds on any subject without fear of prosecution. They can practice their faith openly. They are rewarded for hard work and ingenuity.
So I guess my answer to the question 'is American society worth emulating?' is a resounding yes, despite its flaws. Is it worth exporting? Perhaps, but not by force-- and we're not doing trying to do so.
Neo-con gives a speech and you complain that the questions were liberal.
But regardless, you seem to conflate two things: morality and an absolute support of American foreign policy.
You paraphrase Fukayama's bit about the morality of American foreign policy causing it to be accepted, but what if that foreign policy is truly immoral? But more importantly, who is to say that anyone will see it as moral and even if they did, would they actually care. For all those reasons I think it is pretty obvious that Fukayama's point against Kristol is a pretty strong one. Kristol is just illogical when he claims that a vigerously moral foreign policy will win anyone over (you actually manage to prove Fukayama right when you grant the wars in Iraq and Vietnam the status of being moral, yet who did they win over to the US side?? No one, so does that make you/Kristol or Fukayama right?).
But then you go on and on about how arguing that American foreign policy having no morality ought to be a crime; Dan/Mr. Morality (http://criticalmassblog.com/main/2006/1/14/from-yale-building-morality.html), read your bible.
Even if Fukayama was arguing what you claim he was (which he wasn't, he was simply arguing that morality doesn't win people over, but whatever), how can it be a crime to demand the end of an immoral action? Isn't it immoral to not demand a change to something immoral? I'm pretty sure that collection of books that you claim is the basis of absolute morality says so. Perhaps you ought to take a look at that every now and then.
But last, you call Fukayama a flip-flopper for taking away his support of the war in Iraq because it has gone terribly wrong. My first problem with this is that I tend to like a person who when they do something terribly wrong, acknowledge that, and change their behavior (something you and this President have had immense difficulty with: http://republicandan.blogspot.com/2005/01/culture-quiz.html)/
But more importantly, Fukayama has very good line of reasoning for why his support has changed, if you wanted to be rigerous about your criticism of his change, you should have addressed his reasoning for change, not the pure fact that he changed.
-Mr. Alec