Smart People Can Admit They Goofed

On CBC's The Sunday Edition show yesterday, they had an interview with Francis Fukuyama, one of the "founding fathers" of "NeoConservativism".

While I had no expectation of actually agreeing with Fukuyama on much of anything - having been less than overwhelmed by the BushCo neoCons, I was rather intrigued by the discussion of his latest book America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy. I haven't read it, but the direction of the interview focused on the much abused state of neoConservatism today. While Fukuyama isn't backing away from what he advocated in The End of History and the Last Man, he is clearly stepping away from the implementation of neoconservative ideas the way that BushCo has pursued it.

He doesn't say "mea culpa, mea maxima culpa" about it - he's not apologetic for his beliefs, but he does say that the whole mess in Iraq ultimately was misguided and has served to highlight how power has come to undermine the good aspects of his personal philosophies. (Yes, and I'm quite sure that Karl Marx would have been quite horrified at what Lenin, or Stalin did with Communism...but that's another rant).

I have to give Fukuyama credit for having the insight to recognize that things are off the rails, and to criticize those who have perverted a political ideology in the name of power.

What I do understand of Fukuyama's political ideology I tend not to agree with - he's trying to draw a "post-humanist" world view, and to me it comes off as a disturbing cross between the world that L. Ron Hubbard described in BattleField Earth and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. It's not a combination I believe reflects the realities of the human experience on this world.