Humankind over the centuries has seen an evolution. We go from hunter gatherers to Agricultural Societies to principalities up to the Industrial Revolution. And there is a process which social institutions become more complex. They develop certain features. Marx said this process would culminate in a utopia. I think most progressive intellectuals for the one or 50i years actually believed in the end of history but they thought ulit was communism. My argument was we did not seem to be going that this is before the collapse of the soviet union. The idea was there did seem to be a process of modernization there was people wanted to live in modern societies the kind of modern society we seem to be ending up that was liberal democracy and capitalism not socialism. In a sense we are getting off the strain of history one stop before the where the commonness of the marxist get off. Stuart professes btk you were talking in 2006 about you 1992 book the end of history and the last man. Do what you say about liberal democracy does it stand up today . Actually yes that clip was remarkably coherence. Since 2006 i think we have seen a lot of regression in the progress of democracy all over the world. Freedom house attracts global democracy has noted weve had 17 consecutive years of decline of the aggregate amount of democracy. I think the world really looks different in ways than it did back then. The question i was trying to raise is not was going to happen in any given decade or short term. But really the longer market. I think theres still an open question as to what kind of destination we are heading to as our society modernized. Again you are referencing your book from 1990 to the end of history and the last man. I want to reach your most recent book which came out last year called liberalism and its discontent. Quote i am writing this book and a period when liberalism has faced numerous critiques and challenges and appears to many people in old and worn out ideology that fails to answer the challenges of the time. Nonetheless liberalism has survived past challenges and its durability reflects the fact it has a practical, moral, economic justifications that appealed to many people especially after they have been exhausted by that violent struggles and by alternative political systems. Where would you rank the threat to classical liberalism today . I think its pretty severe. Maybe not as severe as the ones we have endured in the 1930s and 40s when we had stalinism and fascism as active enemies or even the 1960s and 70s you had a lot of coup detats and authoritarian takeovers. I do think the threat is pretty severe. The geopolitical dimension is important. We have not got russia and china which have consolidated authoritarian states. Russia Just Launched an invasion of a neighboring democracy trying to prove democracy would not work in that part of the world. China has been arguing western democracy is in some kind of terminal decline. So youve got the external challenge and youve got the internal challenge of populism in the United States first and foremost. You have politicians in a Political Movement that really attacks the liberal part of liberal democracy, the rule of law does not want to concede elections and is not interested in peaceful transfer of power. I would say it yes, we are in a very difficult phase right now. If we do not fight back against this it is going to get worse. Quick sticking with the liberalism and its discontent, you talk about national populace on the right and progressives on the left. What is the definition of each of those d terms . Looks well, i think the populace nationalism denies the fundamental liberal premise that all human beings are fundamentally equal in moral terms. There is an inherent Human Dignity that transcends your skin color, your gender, other kinds of attributes that deserve to be protected by a rule of law by giving you rights that the state needs to observe it. I think a lot of nationalists would say it and said no, thats not good enough we are not just generic human beings. We are hindus or we are hungarians, we are some particular subset of human beings and we have a special status that deserves recognition above that of other people. This is not the first time this has come about, liberalism itself got its start in the 17th century after 150 years of continuous work there in europe between protestants and catholics over how they would use religion toio define a particular quality of the early liberals said we need to get beyond that and recognize the fact that regardless of our religious concessions we are human beings it is that characteristic that we need to preserve and we need a system that allows people with diverse views with the good life way of living together. And so that is a recurrent threat. It was religion in the 17thli century. It was nationalism in the 19th and early 20 century. So there are these movements that reject the liberal presence and i think that is really what is attacking liberalism from the right. The threat from the left is a little bit different. I think many progressives in the United States and other advanced countries believe liberalism really does not serve the ends of social justice in terms of racial equality, gender equality, equality of Sexual Orientation in the sort of thing. And they need something faster. They need a system thats more decisive that will protect the rights of marginalized groups and therefore they are willing to discard certain liberal principles freedom of speech probably first and foremost. I think between the two threats the one coming from the right is much more present. Its backed by a lot of geopolitical power and state power in many instances. I think you see a liberal tendency on thehe sides. Host the summa leaders use in your book who perhaps natural populace called putamen, would you put modi in there as well and possibly former President Trump . Yes, definitely modi and trump are charter members of that liberal group. Modern india on that liberal basis its unbelievably Diverse Society by task, biogeography by language. Liberalism is a doctrine that seeks to allow diverse populations to live in peace. All human beings should be treated fairly and equally. His Hindu Nationalist Party is trying to do is shift that National Identity to one thats based on hinduism basically muslims and christians who make up a significant part of the indian population. I think this is a real formula for a lot of violence. India has alreadynd experienced was pushing a similar kind of agenda. I think of a case of donald trump he does not say this quite so explicitly. He has given permission for white nationalists to say we do not accept this diverse multi racial multicultural america as the true america. There is another older america that was founded on common religious christian values. That had a certain racial definition. That was the kind of america that he and a lot of his followers have eroded. So again hes got something less than universal understanding of who it is that gets a dignity in the world thats one of the things thats currently with american politics. Quicks francis, term and the meaning that comes up often in your writing is political decay. When you use that term what do you mean . So political decay is not something ive always used. It does not appear in my 1992 book because i just was not aware of this process. But basically political decay occurs when you create a modern state that is functional. But it gets undermined especially elite groups that seek to capture to make use of it for their own purposes, to protect their positions. And it is the tendency of human institutions to get overly rigid. Human beings are rule following creatures. That is when the characteristics that simply built into human nature. Once you get a set of rules that people follow andow they want to continue following them. But the environment changes, things do not work so well but what look like a good set of rule in an earlier age no longer become functional but then you are trapped in the system because you are unable to change it. Barring war, collapse, crisis. That i think its a situation that america is facing right now. Very old Constitutional Order that has served it very well for more than a couple of centuries. But that order really has bigw. Problems the system does not seem to be able to correct itself. F part of it is we have a constitution its very hard to amend but also americans get used to doing things in certain ways and they cannot imagine changes to those institutions. They define themselves by and as a result the system begins to decay and it becomes much less effective. See what i want to write a quote from Robert George of Princeton University this is may of thiss year. He was quoted on twitter as saying if polls are to be believed there has been a precipitous decline in americans belief in the importance ofan patriotism, religion, marriage, family, and community. Values that broadly speaking have throughout our history united americans despite our many differences. By the Authority Vested in me by absolutely no one i have declared june to be fidelity month a month dedicated to renewing fidelity to god, spouses and families, our country and our community. I dont know if you saw that when he made that statement but what is your reaction . Yes, robby is a friend of mine we served together on president George W Bush council. Counsel. We have disagreed abouty things ever since then. I would say youve got to decide a lot of the things robby talks about there. I think for example belief in gods happening there is a lot of data that shows at least in terms of fidelity to institutionalized religion there is been a big change thats much less religious than the preceding generation. Some of those declines are class based. If you think about Something Like a marriage or bringing children up in a singleparent family one of the very unfortunate things happening in the society is actually for welltodo people meeting people with highere educations, professionals actually those institutions have gotten stronger an epidemic of divorce in family breakdown across the country and 80s and early 90s but for welltodo people the trend has been in the opposite direction. Instead of latchkey children you know have got helicopter parents much too devoted to their children for their childrens own good. But for workingclass people people with lower levels of education that decay has continued for thats when the big divides in the society there is a drug crisis, and opioid an opioidcrisis that hits workis people then more educated people are more immune too. Upon the sources of polarization. Patriotism is a complicated issue. I think there is a deep problem because americans i had thought when i was growing up had actually come to an understanding of National Identity was up very good place i thought to be after the Civil Rights Movement there was a divorce between what defined in american in the race or gender. It really centered around liberal values. I think that is what allowed me as a Third Generation descendent of japanese immigrants to regard myself as fully american. I hate to say in the last decade on number of americans have been retreating from thatea understanding of american identity. They want to relocate it in a particular race orul ethnicity. One of the problems with patriotism is you have to define what is the country was the National Identity to which you are being patriotic . The left and the right, red, blue we both believe in the constitution but they actually believe in very different understandings of what the american constitution implies. And that means what is patriotism, evoke a trunk during the generally sixth riots said okay, patriots go express yourselves. But thats not the meaning of patriotism anyone on the other side of that divide would find remotely acceptable. So do american soul of their country . I think yes but which country do they really love . That is something that has not deteriorated it just split in terms of very different understandings of what america is and what it represents very quick so professor when it comes to identity politics and Critical Race Theory which you write about as well, how do those fit into what we are discussing right now . s been a huge shift in self understanding of what it means to be a progressive or a person on the left. For most of the 20th century it was defined and very broad class terms. Karl marx had a version of this the fundamental divide was bourgeoisie basically pure workingclass who are oppressed and so forth. I think as time went on in the second half of the 20th century that understanding of marginalization and oppression began to be much more rooted in tespecifics that had been marginalized. Theres a completely appropriate recognition the working class was a very different experience for white people than it was for africanamericans. Certainly the differences in Workplace Experiences between men and women were very different therefore you had to define inequality and much more specific terms that has to do with identities that were not shared universally across society but applied to particular groups. Now in terms of the next book i wrote, liberalism there is a very liberal understanding of identity or rather there is a liberal way of interpreting identity. Martin luther kingg said africanamericans are being mistreated, treated as secondclass citizens. What we want is to be able to enjoy the same rights that white people enjoy. That is exactly a liberal understanding p of dignity. I think there is a different understanding that basically has become more entrenched in recent years. These differences are much more essential. They are not things that can be overcome. They really define who you are as an individual and that leads to a very different kind of identity politics in which these circumstances you have no control over. What skin color you are, what gender you are, and so forth. They become the things that most ouidentify you. On that becomes a problem and a liberal society because it seems your Group Membership is whats really important. That is whats going to determine the way the state treats you. How youre going to get a job, you get into a university and the sort of thing. That becomes an illiberal understanding of human society. See what i want to read a quote from former president barack obama. This was from earlier this month on cnn. Quote it is very hard to sustain a democracy we haveai such concentrations of wealth. And so part of my argument has been unless we attend to that party list to make people feel more economically secure and we are taking more seriously the need to create ladders of a stronger and safety net that has adapted to these new technologies and the displacements are going on around the world, if we dont take care of that that is also going to fuel the kind of mostly far right populism that it can also potentially come from the left that is undermining democracy because it makes people angry and resentful and scared. Yes, i agree completely with that. It is funny i agree with most of these broad statements of principle that obama has made both as president and subsequently. I think in a democracy you have to worry about not just the quality of formal rates but substantive equality. Social economic differences become too extreme. People get very resentful and lose faith in the legitimacy of the system. Theyre a good deal of what was driving the populisms about the right and the left in the 2000 tens was the growth of inequality that in turn was the byproduct of whats called neoliberal economic policies that have been pursued beginning in thead late 70s through the 80s and 90s that created a lot of inequality. And thehe solution is you need more redistribution. You need protections that equalize outcomes and not simply opportunities like obamacare like the Affordable Care act that tried to provide a certain minimal level of healthcare for all americans. That is something every other modern democracy provides for its citizens except for the United States up until daca was passed in 2010. And i think in general the more expansive welfare state, more protections for people that does redistribute from rich to poor, that would go a long way to securing peoples belief of legitimacy and democracy. Think the social democracy that grew up in europe in the postworld war ii period was represented by the american new deal and Great Society and so forth. They were very important in anchoring democracy. I have absolutely no quarrel with that. I think the problem however is that i am not sure of the problem is just economic inequality you can remedy that through some fairly easy policies. In we have been in the process of doing that. You can raise taxes on rich people and you can use that money to provide more healthcare, more education, more social benefits. The problem igh think right nows the resentments and the polarization between red and blue is not simply about economic inequality. If it were you could fix that problem fairly easily. And if that were the real driver of the populist upsurge shouldbeen Bernie Sanders rathen donald trump. St should have taken the form of more state intervention in the economy. More protection. It took this curious othern. Fom in which it was cultural that rose to the floor like hostility to immigration the fights over crt and National Identity. And right now what is defining the Republican Party is not so much economic. They were actually okay not dismantling Social Security and that sort of thing but what is really driving the passions are these cultural issues that may have been triggered by economic inequality. But they are kind of separate also. I think that is why simply more social protections is not going to field the problems that exist in our society. Host since the publication of your book in 1992, the end of history has your political views involved