a good read for sure - but does anyone really believe that the tenets of neoconservatism were anything but a pawn in the machinations of Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rove? If you want a template go back to the Italian city states, go back to the dynamics that inspired the writings of Machiavelli. The naive intellectualism of the neocons may have proved useful as a thing to exploit and possibly as a tantalising bauble to dangle before the dumbfounded Mr Bush - but don't give them credit for actually having caused anything.

I would suggest that all foreign policy is more or less realistic in nature but that the realism becomes attached for reasons beyond its control to sundry subsets which vitiate original conceptions - but hey, that's realism.

Posted by: saintsimon at September 27, 2006 10:18 PM | Permalink to this comment

Oh that dry British wit...

Posted by: Chris at September 28, 2006 03:27 AM | Permalink to this comment

I heard somewhere that Fukuyama has summarized his latest book with the words, "I'm just a neoconservative whose intentions were good; oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood."

No, really. Foreign policy is a very important and serious subject. Do you honestly think I would make up something like that just to get a cheap laugh?

Anyway, ineffectual internationalism is coming into vogue just about now. The Democracy Arsenal blog is joining Fukuyama at the cutting edge of doctrinal fashion, and at this rate "Double I" will take the country by storm within three years, to the point where Jimmy Carter will return to government service -- as ambassador in Tehran.

Posted by: Zathras at September 28, 2006 05:07 AM | Permalink to this comment

like any good intellectual manque, Fukuyama was happy to take credit for "misinterpretations" of his work when it was to his benefit. Now that things aren't working out so well for those who "misinterpreted" his ideas, its a completely different story.

Fukuyama has always been vacuous and vainglorious -- and his current claim that he didn't really mean "The End of History" when he wrote a book by that name is all the proof you need. Anyone who was paying attention in high school history class (unlike, apparently, Fukuyama) knows that "history" is not about linear progress, but more akin to "two steps forward, one step back." It comes as no surprise then, that a political philosophy that was predicated on ignoring "the step back" would wind up discredited...

Posted by: p.lukasiak at September 28, 2006 08:11 AM | Permalink to this comment

Anyone who read the book should realize that Fukuyama's title did not refer to history, but to History. 'History' is a technical term in Hegelian philosophy that has little to do with history. At least that's how Fukuyama tells it. I know nothing about Hegel myself.

One of my favorite philosophical wisecracks is that Kant only makes sense in German, while Hegel doesn't make sense in any language.

Posted by: David Tomlin at September 28, 2006 09:16 AM | Permalink to this comment

Because the philosophical world needs a little Monty Python:

"Immanuel Kant was a real pissant who was very rarely stable,
Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar who could think you under the table,
David Hume could out-consume Schopenhauer and Hegel"

I would hate to see what the Pythonites (or your average rap star) would do to Fukuyama, but it is probably no less than he deserves. Those whose philosophies bring us hubris and death probably deserve a little scatological mockery.

Posted by: Appalled Moderate at September 28, 2006 06:12 PM | Permalink to this comment

And Wittgenstein was a beery swine who was just as sloshed as Schlegel.
There's nothing Nietzsche couldn't teach 'ya 'bout the raising of the wrist.
Socrates, himself, was permanently pissed.
John Stuart Mill, of his own free will, after half a pint of shandy was
particularly ill.
Plato, they say, could stick it away, 'alf a crate of whiskey every day!
Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle,
And Hobbes was fond of his Dram.
And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart:
"I drink, therefore I am."
Yes, Socrates himself is particularly missed;
A lovely little thinker, but a bugger when he's pissed.

Posted by: Matterhorn at September 28, 2006 09:03 PM | Permalink to this comment

"And does not the Philosopher, through the incessant and bewildering use of sentences long, wandering, questioning, and of the Germanic verb-last construction, of himself, and for no conceivable reason, a considerable nuisance make?"

--attributed to Martin Heidegger

Posted by: bobo the chimp at September 29, 2006 02:54 AM | Permalink to this comment