SPEAKING OF THE END OF HISTORY:

Here's a a href=http://beagle.monkeybrains.net/longnow/salt-recordings/salt-020070628-fukuyama/salt-020070628-fukuyama_web.mp3>podcast (MP3) where the author himself does, Francis Fukuyama, Democracy versus culture (Stewart Brand, June 29th,

Fukuyama is most intrigued by a challenge that comes from his old teacher and continuing friend, Samuel Huntington, author of The Clash of Civilizations. Culture can trump modernization, says Huntington— current radical Islam is an example. Fukuyama agrees that people at the fringe of modernization feel a sense of onslaught, and they can respond as Bolsheviks and Fascists did in the 20th century. “A Hitler or a Bin Laden proclaims, ‘I can tell you who you are.’”

A second challenge to the universalism of liberal democracy is that it does not yet work internationally. Fukuyama agrees, noting that the major current obstacle is America’s overwhelming hegemony. He expects no solution from the UN, but an overlapping set of international institutions could eventually do the job.

A third challenge is the continuing poverty trap for so many in the world. Fukuyama says it takes a national state with the rule of law and time to learn from mistakes before you get economic takeoff. He sees later colonialism, done on the cheap (instead of with the patient institution building that England did in India), as a major source of the world’s current failed and crippled states.

The final challenge that impresses Fukuyama is the possibility that technology may now be accelerating too fast to cure its own problems the way it has done in the past. Climate change could be an example of that. And Fukuyama particularly worries that biotechnology might so transform human nature that it will fragment humanity irreparably.