Quotes from Francis Fukuyama

With justice and moderation the people will produce more, tax revenues will increase, and the state will grow rich and powerful. Justice is the foundation of a powerful state.

On the right, plenty of new white nationalist voices would like to drag the country backward to an identity once again based on race, ethnicity, or religion. It is urgent that

These groups began agitating against corruption through reports and publicity about the backgrounds of candidates published in sympathetic newspapers; they sought to professionalize government by making it nonpartisan. Ironically, while this group spoke in the name of democracy, it actually represented the upper crust of Chicago society, an overwhelmingly Protestant group that looked down on the way that Lorimer was empowering the city's new Catholic and Jewish immigrants.

These cases illustrate the way institutional arrangements can become self-reinforcing: once the principle of electoral politics is established under a limited franchise, incumbent parties can attempt to stay in power by seeking new voters, shifting to new issues, and reaching out across class lines.22

The substantive conservative critique of liberalism—that liberal societies provide no strong common moral horizon around which community can be built—is true enough. This is indeed a feature and not a bug of liberalism. The question for conservatives is whether there is a realistic way to roll back the secularism of contemporary liberal societies and reimpose a thicker moral order.

Lorimer for his part was contemptuous of the municipal reformers, calling them hypocrites who were using the reform cause as a means of increasing their own power and influence.

But the stability of democratic politics in the period from the end of World War II up to the present revolved around dominant center-left and center-right parties that largely agreed on the legitimacy of a democratic welfare state.

This book would not have been written had Donald J. Trump not been elected president in November 2016.

The self-care and wellness movements are simply contemporary manifestations of Rousseau's vision of the "plenitude" of the inner self. That self is good, and its recovery is the original fount of human happiness. But it has been polluted by an outer society that feeds us unhealthy foods full of pesticides and artificial flavors, that sets goals and expectations that build anxiety and self-doubt, and by competitive urges that undermine our self-esteem.

Some people today argue that religion is primarily a source of violence, conflict, and social discord.25 Historically, however, religion has played the opposite role: it is a source of social cohesion that permits human beings to cooperate far more widely and securely than they would if they were the simple rational and self-interested agents posited by the economists.

a politically developed liberal democracy includes all three sets of institutions—the state, rule of law, and procedural accountability—

The fact that La Follette had to use machine tactics to beat the machine suggests that machines themselves are in some way intrinsic to politics—that is, all political leaders must assemble coalitions whose members do not always share the same goals, and must often be brought along with bribery, inducements, threats, and argument.

Human beings cooperate to compete and compete to cooperate.

Liberal democracy is built around the rights given to individuals who are equal in their freedom, that is, who have an equal degree of choice and agency in determining their collective political lives.

Liberal individualism does not preclude or deny human sociability; it simply means that most social engagements in a liberal society will ideally be voluntary. You can join with other people, but what groups you join are, to the maximum extent possible, a matter of personal choice.

This professional class had an elevated view of its own status and importance, and tended to resent the fact that the bosses controlling municipal politics were cruder and less educated than they were. They were also taxpayers who didn't like the fact that their hard-earned dollars were going into the pockets of machine politicians.

Forgetting, I would even say historical error, is essential to the creation of a nation, which is why the advance of historical study often poses a threat to nationality.

It was only Frederick's enormous skill as a military commander and outright luck (the accession of Peter III to the Russian throne) that saved the state and allowed it to remain a major European player.

Trump represented a broader trend in international politics, toward what has been labeled populist nationalism.

The inner self is the basis of human dignity

A middle-class voter could equally well take a proffered government job, or be persuaded that his or her family's long-term interests are better served by a system that recruits the best possible people on an impersonal basis. The choice actually made often depends on how these ideas are publically articulated.

It is not enough that I have a sense of my own worth if other people do not publicly acknowledge it or, worse yet, if they denigrate me or don't acknowledge my existence.

Social media and the internet have facilitated the emergence of self-contained communities, walled off not by physical barriers but by belief in shared identity.

The resulting Rechtsstaat has been described as a liberal autocracy. It provided strong protections of the rights of its citizens in an impersonal manner, even though these citizens did not have the political right to hold their rulers accountable through elections.