Francis Fukuyama may or may not regret having written The End of History? What I would say is that his prognostications under the banner of that title have been wilfully misunderstood, vey often by people who did not trouble to read the text. But that is not my concern today. Instead the slimmer volume, State Building, catches my eye. It was written in 2004 when even the most jaundiced commenatator could surely not have predicted the Trump phenomenon. However Fukuyama's defence of the properly constituted nation state as the bedrock of decency and the rule of law, makes particularly poignant reading as Trump tramples the rule of law underfoot whilst ironically (ironic because his small mind could not fathom the truth) uncovering the importance of the nation state.
A great deal of both international and national law coming out of Europe consists of what amounts to social policy wish lists that are completely unenforceable. Europenas justify these kinds of laws by saying they are expressions of social objectives. Americans say, correctly in my view, that such unenforceable aspirations undermine the rule of law itself.
No comments:
Post a Comment