What to make of Francis Fukuyama? I haven't read his New York Times Magazine piece (TimesSelect only sorry!) opting out of post-Iraq neoconservatism. I never bought into his "End of History" motif. It overlooked culture as much as economics and overplayed liberal democracy as the end game of humanity.
How could the acclaimed scholar holed up for years at the Rand Corporation overlook the march of the Islam, particularly when it was centrifugal to the politics of the Mideast?
Why should we take his advice on how the Europeans should best assimilate their unhuddled but ghettoized masses? Fukuyama is right to say that European integration -- resting on the thin blood and and soggy soil -- is a failure. And he is right to look to the American model of assimilation that's mostly successful. That's because the American model is open-ended based on an idea (individualism) not blood weight and blood lines.
But should one dismiss Pat Buchanan's clarion call altogether as does Fukuyama? Where does one get the spine to reorient one's course in the ongoing battle? One gets spine from reading a bit of Tony Blankley, a bit of Bruce Bawer and a modest bit of Buchanan. All while tossing a few bitter bits in favor of a rational policy. Few have dispelled Buchanan's grasp of the demographics. See the more libertarian Mark Styen.
We hope that Mr. Fukuyama remembers the need for a little spine-building when the next opportunity to opt out arises. While he doesn't ignore the problem facing the Europeans, he ought to give the Americans a little more credit.
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