Krauthammer: Fukuyama's Fantasy

Washington Post Writers Group ^ | March 28, 2006 | Charles Krauthammer

[RWR8189]

WASHINGTON -- It was, as the hero tells it, his Road to Damascus moment. There he is, in a hall of 1,500 people he has long considered to be his allies, hearing the speaker treat the Iraq War, nearing the end of its first year, as ``a virtually unqualified success.'' He gasps as the audience enthusiastically applauds. Aghast to discover himself in a sea of comrades so deluded by ideology as to have lost touch with reality, he decides he can no longer be one of them.

And thus did Francis Fukuyama become the world's most celebrated ex-neoconservative, a well-timed metamorphosis that has brought him a piece of the fame that he once enjoyed 15 years ago as the man who declared, a mite prematurely, that history had ended.

A very nice story. It appears in the preface to Fukuyama's post-neocon coming out, ``America at the Crossroads.'' Last Sunday it was repeated on the front page of The New York Times Book Review in Paul Berman's review.

I happen to know something about this story, as I was the speaker whose 2004 Irving Kristol lecture to the American Enterprise Institute Fukuyama has now brought to prominence. I can therefore testify that Fukuyama's claim that I attributed ``virtually unqualified success'' to the war is a fabrication.

A convenient fabrication -- it gives him a foil and the story drama -- but a foolish one because it can be checked. The speech was given at the Washington Hilton before a full house, carried live on C-SPAN and then published by the American Enterprise Institute under its title ``Democratic Realism: An American Foreign Policy for a Unipolar World.'' (It can be read at http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.19912,filter.all/pub_detail.asp)

As indicated by the title, the speech was not about Iraq. It was a fairly theoretical critique of the four schools of

 

[the_Watchman]

Krauthammer is good! He has the intellectual impact of William Buckley Jr., but he bothers to be understandable without a thesaurus at hand. :)

[therut]

He is good as far as foreign policy. But on social issues he is not conservative at all.

[mojito]

I've always despised Fukuyama as a pretentious nitwit, and I'm pleased to see Charles, an man of real learning and insight, put him in his place.

[caveat emptor]

Good post. Glad to see Kraut calling out Fukuyama.

[goldstategop]

Francis Fukyuma's famous of End Of History thesis has been trashed by 9/11. We're not living in an era where liberal democracy has universally triumphed or conflict between cultures has ceased. The interval between the collapse of the Communist Bloc and the Rise Of Islamofascism was simply a lacunae between one period of confrontation and another. In a word, it a perfect Hegelian thesis giving rise to a new synthesis. It cannot be otherwise. For the only way to completely eliminate differences in human nature as well as human belief systems is to extinguish human life on the planet altogether. And as long as humanity is around, people in different cultures will never see things in the same light.

(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")

[driftless]

Too bad about Fukuyama. It's one thing to a have a policy disagreement, quite another to fabricate lies about someone elses words. I read "The End Of History", and it's a tough but good read. Unfortunately Fukuyama, with his latest mystifying actions, has made himself a pariah in the conservative movement.

[bkepley]

So he's a lying putz.

[Redmen4ever]

At the time that F. wrote, liberal democratic capitalism was triumphant over communism. Thus, the struggle as to what would succeed the old order, of hereditary monarchs and colonial empires was over.

For F. to think this was ever a question implies that he considered some form of socialism to be an option.

Therefore, it is not a surprise that he has now distanced himself from liberal democratic capitalism.

[maica]

I happen to know something about this story, as I was the speaker whose 2004 Irving Kristol lecture to the American Enterprise Institute Fukuyama has now brought to prominence. I can therefore testify that Fukuyama's claim that I attributed ``virtually unqualified success'' to the war is a fabrication.

POW!