The laws of politics are like the laws of physics.Īs esteemed Australian historian Christopher Clark - who has written extensively of Germany and World War I - said: "As gravity bends light, so power bends time." Power is to politics what atoms are to matter. Tyranny is always laying in wait for justice and freedom. The 21st century will be defined by the struggle of democracy and autocracy.įaith in progress is not enough. His vision for his country's future certainly does not embrace democracy. Xi Jinping believes China has a better model. As citizens lose faith within democracies so other nations, too, look elsewhere. Why, though? Because democracy often fails its own tests. It isn't difficult to realise he's talking about Solomon Islands and China. Marcos Junior follows another elected autocrat, Rodrigo Duterte, whose daughter will now be sworn in as vice president. Now the Philippines has elected its new president Ferdinand Marcos Junior - the son of the former dictator and kleptocrat, Ferdinand Marcos, who kept an iron grip on the nation for decades. Viktor Orban in Hungary, who has boasted of his "illiberal democracy", was elected.īrazil's Jair Bolsanaro and India's Narendra Modi have each been accused of undermining democracy. The belief in unending progress and utopian visions leads us to freedom and democracy, but it also leads to the gulag and the gas chamber.ĭoes democracy bend toward tyranny? Remember, Adolf Hitler was elected. In the richest nation on earth, life expectancy has been decreasing amidst what has been called an epidemic of gun violence, suicide, substance abuse, poverty and despair. Gross inequality is a cancer eating American democracy alive. Try telling African Americans dying under the knee of cops that these are the best of times. What about America - the so-called "shining city on the hill" - what Abraham Lincoln called humanity's last great hope? Try telling an Appalachian dirt-poor farmer or an unemployed rust belt factory worker that these are the best of times. But try telling that to someone living in Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan, North Korea or the Democratic Republic of Congo. He tells us we are living in the best of times: a time of global peace, technological advancement, we are healthier and wealthier and live longer than at any other time in human history. Psychologist Stephen Pinker clings to the faith. The cancer eating American democracy alive But that dream still remains that: a dream. This isn't to deny the greater good that beats at the heart of liberalism - the dream of liberty itself. In this sense, defending liberalism in the face of its complicity in evil: in corruption, in racism, sexism, genocide, imperialism. Liberalism can be seen as a theodicy, an attempt to justify God in the face of evil. In essence, he says, it isn't liberalism that has failed but we have failed it - with our intolerance, our moral decay, and the rise of democratic autocrats, strong men who exploit fear and anxiety and rule by dividing us.Īs Fukuyama says: "Liberalism has been challenged in recent years not just by populists of the right, but from a renewed progressive left as well."īut he has not given up the faith. Three decades later in his new book, Liberalism and its Discontents, Fukuyama concedes liberal democracy is, as he writes, "under severe threat around the world", yet he still clings to its promise.
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