laurenandrikanich 's review for:

Liberalism and Its Discontents by Francis Fukuyama

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ok to begin with the stronger points:

• he makes a fairly compelling argument that post-2016 liberalism has been under worse attack than post-2016 democracy
• i can also contend that it’s better to think of humans as producers of happiness and creativity and social goods than consumers, and that the things we produce, even at an economic loss, are infringed upon with government parentalism marketed as “help” (ie the consumer welfare standard - protecting against higher prices or less consumer options while simultaneously robbing us of creating independently / enjoying & starting small businesses)
• somewhat agree: the act of choice is not the noble thing, but WHAT you are choosing — this is how i feel about the phrase “everyone should vote.”  is the act of a nazi voting more valuable to me than preventing them from voting?*
• *BUT ALSO the groups who get excluded from limiting the act of choice are frequently minorities and not nazis. so.
• HEAVY AGREE: corporations selling you self-actualization and moralizing finding yourself through organic groceries or western-perverted yoga are not the key to finding your deep inner self 
• HEAVY AGREE: international law requires national enforcement, which is why bringing security council members like the U.S. before the ICJ is functionally useless
• AGREE: adherence toward ONLY personal autonomy and individual desire is not a communal benefit

and now for the dissent:

• fukuyama’s critique of the right undermining liberalism is that they refuse to honor limited executive power. and the critique of the left undermining liberalism is that we look toward furthering specific group’s rights instead of the general individual right. i present to you: general individual rights being a great baseline, and specific group rights being SPECIFIC TO GROUP NEEDS. also, what is a group but a collection of individuals? if a specific sector is made up of a bunch of individuals rights not being met, and those rights are inapplicable to other groups (ie abortion), then would making specifications / acting in group interest not further liberalism? to establish a better baseline? this seems to be primarily why he does not adequately address abortion as a right derived from personal autonomy, something he claims to be a founding principle in liberalism (thought nearly only in an economic sense). he makes the mistake of conflating nationalism— giving preference to a favorite group politically, economically, and socioculturally— with addressing the needs of a specific group. if you constantly defer to a national or transnational blanket policy, you create gaps in minority rights.
• critique of the right: using the economy as a mean to limit rights v. critique of the left: top-down implementation of rights, rather than naturally realizing them? not comparable! though he sort of concedes that they aren’t equal threats, the equal consideration of the two positions places them in the same ballpark, and of relatively same importance.
• no state economic intervention? only state-wide banks and international monetary resources? free market ! except we need cash infusions and regulation to sustain ! so not that ! complete individual choice ! no top-down policy ! except we need centralization ! so not that ! except trickle-down economics ! that can be top-down ! minority rights have to be a natural progression though ! apparently ! can’t be nationally mandated !
• advocates for morals only operating within existing moral framework? morality that poses a threat to the framework of liberalism is not inherently bad.
• fukuyama will just grasp the point— meritocracies still treat people different based on sociocultural upbringing— but then argue that there is an obstacle in the culture that needs to be tailored to the system, rather than that this is a flaw in the system recognized by cultural differences. this example summarizes the bulk of the book.
• what do we do when liberal democracy is not sufficient? i understand the argument that the debate and compromise required by liberalism helps prevent major backtracking, and can even concede that liberalism’s balances of power has somewhat thwarted trump in terms of regressive policy, but what does such a system permit when human autonomy is similarly limited by  checks and balances that render progressive policy largely unachievable and stagnant? sure, a doctrine or theory can’t be all-encompassing, but can it be encompassing of? anything? other than property rights and free market values? i think it’s easy to justify a theory when there’s nothing much substantive to justify.
• you lost me at deferring to local govt— which is helpful in terms of local social and cultural understanding— rather than all-encompassing national policy, even when it comes to human rights. is it not easier to solidify human rights from a top-down approach? to create an accepted premise? furthermore, if a doctrine is unable to effectively establish a basis, and is subject to the slow progression of politics, how effective can we argue that that doctrine is? is this really even a tool? or just an idea we’re not really adhering to? interpretation of theory is not meant to be perfect but i think it’s meant to be SOMETHING.
• also, it’s ridiculous to assert group rights undermine individual agency. acting counterculture to an accepted practice within a group may not be popular, but with the guarantee of group rights, it is STILL AVAILABLE to act unpopualrly. the same cannot be said of limiting group rights to promote the vague idea of liberalism.
• HOW CAN YOU MAKE THE JUSTIFICATION THAT FLUID GROUPS (class) SHOULD BE CONSIDERED MORE HEAVILY BY LIBERALISM THAN FIXED GROUPS (race)? sure sure sure you’re likely to die in the class you were born into, but one of these has FLUIDITY AND IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE. protect the poor jesus christ but poverty is certainly less of a fixed state that race?