that. i think you've convinced many of us that things could be better in liberal societies, but i want you the take comfort in one thing. the naval academy is not a modern university. we -- or west point, for that matter, or the air force academy or st. john's. we encourage debate, and we, because of that, invite you back anytime you want to come and speak again. thank you. next week, all right. [applause] so i'm sure you're hungry. all midshipmen here are welcome to eat upstairs, and we will start again at:45 with dr. fukuyama. >> the conference also hosted a discussion on the future role of liberalism. in democracy with remarks from francis fukuyama of stanford if, university with. it's just about an hour. [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] if -- >> afternoon, everyone, and welcome back to the 2024 mccain conference here at the u.s. naval academy in nap if lis, maryland with. i'm jeffrey macris with the center for ethical leadership, and it's a great privilege to welcome yet another distinguished scholar here to annapolis. dr. francis puke yam ma is -- talk t about wrap ma is the senr fellow at the institute for international studies and a faculty member at the center for

democracy development and the rule of law. he's also the director of dorsey masters in international policy and a professor of political science. dr. fukuyama's written widely on issues of development and international politics. his 1992 book, the end of history and the last man, has appeared in over 20 foreign transalations. his latest book is entitled liberalism and its discontent. francis fukuyama received his b.a. from cornell in classics and a ph.d. from harvard in political science, so it's a great i honor to welcome profesr francis fukuyama. [applause] >> i guess it's appropriate that i'm rising in defense of liberalism after patrick. is patrick still here? >> [inaudible] >> oh, there he is. okay.

[laughter] well, it'll be, it'll be a, it'll be an interesting counterpoint. so i consider myself -- excuse me. i had a little motorcycle accident on tuesday, and i'm still feeling a little bit of the effects of that. so if i stop and grimace a little bit, you'll understand why. if in any vent, i want to, i consider myself a classical liberal. it's an important adjective, putting classical in front of liberal, because i think that there's been an evolution of liberalism in certain directions that are tar not necessarily -- that are not necessarily implied in classical liberalism. and i think that most of the complaints about liberalism actually have to do with those extensions in liberalism rather than the core doctrine. so let me just begin with the testify in addition of what i regard as -- definition of what

i regard as liberalism. liberals believe in the universal equality of human dignity. that is to say liberals do not believe that a there is a certain group of human beings, a certain class that has superior dignity to other groups and that that dignity is something that needs to be protected by a rule of law that limits the ability of states to impinge on the rights of those individuals. and it depends on things like constitutions, checks and balanceses and, again, our effos to limit the power of the state. now, that distinguish cans liberalism from something like a theocracy that is based on a single religious doctrine. it's alsoin different from nationalism. it takes one ethnic group with or race and places that into higher dignity to other people. now, liberalism also is compatible with nation-states

that have limited territorial jurisdiction. we can talk about that later. so the world can be -- or needs to be divided up into nation-states but within the confines of the nation-state liberalism asserts that citizens should be treated equally. i think that there are basically three arguments that you can make in favor of liberalism. one is a pragmatic one, second is a moral argument, and the third is economic. so let me just go over those in turn. the pragmatic argument stems from the origin to, the historical origin of liberalism. liberalism appeared in the middle of the 17th century as a result of the european if wars of religion. so after the protestant reformation, europeans spent roughly the next 150 years fighting each other, something like a third of the population

of central europe died in the course of the 30 years' war. it was a very bloody conflict, a very cruel one. and i think at a the end of that period, a lot of european thinkers decided that they needed to lower the temperature of politics such that politics would not be around a central definition of the good life. there were competing definitions of the good life, and liberal thinkers argued that the state ought to be neutral with regard to them. and that means that the central liberal virtue is toleration. you are going to lower the horizons of politics in order to preserve life itself. so the people wouldn't kill each other over the kinds of sectarian differences that had animated european politicses in in the priest -- politics in the previous generations. so it's a means of governing over diversity. the reason you want a liberal

society is that societies are diversee religiously, ethnicall, racially in very many ways, and liberalism is a way to allow those different groups to live next to each other peacefully. the moral justification for liberalism really has to do with the protection of human autonomy and the ability of human beings to exercise choice. i think that this ultimately has religious roots. if you go back to the book of genesis, adam and eve are instructed by god not to eat from the tree, the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. they disobey god, and they're kicked out of the garden of'den. andte therefore human beings hae an intermediate moral status. they're not god, they do not have god's dignity, but they're the also different from the rest are of nature in the sense that

they can sin. and, actually, the fact that adam and eve made the wrong choice is really in a way what characterizes the moral core of a human being. human beings can understand the difference between right and wrong, they can choose to do right. they often times a make the wrong choice, but that makes them different from the rest of nature. and ever since then i think liberal societies have said that human beings basically want to have that fundamental freedom, who to marry, where to live, what occupation to for pursue, what beliefs to hold dear. and and that is a moral character that is fundamental to the dignity of human beings, right? if you ask almost any modern person, you know, so people use the word human dignity all the time. and if you ask what constitutes human dignity, what's the ground of it, i would say that it's fundamentally this ability to make moral if choices.

the final argument really has to do with economics because among the fundamental rights that liberal regimes protect is the right to own private property, the right to transact all protected by a rule of law that respects those property rights and protects the ability to transact, to make economic transactions. and if you look historically across different kinds of societies, the richest societies have always been, essentially, liberal ones that have protected property rights, that have a fundamental rule of law that create the institutional framework within which a modern market economy can arise. now, this is true even in a place like china. when china opened up to the world in 1978, it gave up central planning.

it began to allow ordinary citizens to, in effect, own private property, keep the results of their labor. and china began to grow. it quadrupled its output in the next four years after the household responsibility act was passed that allowed peasants to keep the surplus from their labor. in othersa words, they introduce canned incentives -- introduced incentives into what had been a completely centrally-planned system, and that really is the basis for china getting rich. now, china is in no way a liberal society politically. and it's become a lot less liberal since the rise of xi jinping in s 2013, but the prosperity of modern china really did depend on their adoption of a liberal understanding of property rights. without that, they could not have experienced the kind of economic miracle that today did.

and -- they did. idand this is simply the latestn a whole series of economic success stories beginning with the netherlands, britain, other liberal societies where the pioneers of, first, the commercial and then the industrial revolutions because it protected the ability to innovate, to earn money. it provided incentives to citizens to enrich themselves. and so it has produced a wealthy society. all right. so those are the basic arguments in favor that i think are still very important and necessary to keep in mind. so the question is why has liberalism come under attack as it has from both the right expect if left? -- expect left of? most of my -- well, i wouldn't say most, but a surprising number of my students, actually, would not describe themselveses as liberals because they feel that liberal societies have

permitted too many economic injustices, inequalities and the like and that liberal societies are too slow at correcting those. but this is also a critique that comes from the right that is unhappy with the pact that liberalism actually doesn't set a common goal for the whole society, that it tolerates different views of the good, that it is religiously diverse or permits a kind of religious diversity and the like. i would say that the sharpest criticisms are not of what i regard as that core of classical liberalism, right? that assertion of the universal dignity of human beings. it really has to do with what i regard as extensions of liberal ideas into realms where they cease to make sense or they have very counterproductive consequences. and there's a kind of symmetry

because these extensions are both on the right and on the left. we begin with the ones on the right. it has to do with what's now generally referred to as neoliberalism. that is to say that's -- this is not capitalism per se. for some people, neoliberalism is a synonym for capitalism. i think that there's a much more restrictive definition which has to do with the extension of market principles that is associated with economists like milton friedman, the chicago school, gary becker, george stigler.o these are people that argued thatre state intervention was counterproduct i have, it hurt -- counterproductive, it hurt economic efficiency. and they argued for an across--board removal of the state from economic life. we associate this period with politicians like ronald reagan, margaret thatcher. you know, ronald reagan famously

said, you know, the scariest words he's ever heard were i'm from the government, and i'm here too help. this began a whole period in at least american culture but also a, i think, many europeans' cultural history where the state became the big enemy. the state was the enemy of economic growth. it overregulated. it disincentivized creators and entrepreneurs and the like. and i think that the impact of this kind of -- well, okay. we have to be fair about this. it was precisely this kind of neoliberalism taken to a global level that accounted for the atquadrupling of global output between, let's say, the early 1970s and the early 2000s because you created a global trade system which actually worked the way that your trade theory courses say it should, you know? if you have a paytive advantage and you're able to trade, you can expand markets very

dramatically, and everybody gets rich. this is really what happened in that, in that period. the problem, of course, was that what the trade theorists tended to underemphasize was that not everybody in your society got rich as a result of this process. and in particular, low skilled people living in rich societies were likely to lose jobs and opportunities to similarly skilled people in poor if countries. andun this is exactly what happened particularly after the entry of china9 into the wto in 2001. the other thing was that the whole mantra about taking the state out of the economy was applied in the wrong places and particularly in the financial sector. the financial sector cannot regulate itself. markets do not culminate or they do not end in a kind of self-regulation that protects the interests of the society of the whole. and i think we saw this during

the can subprime crisis in 2008 when banks were allowed to take excessivee risks. but this was just the culmination of a whole series of financial crises that began with the sterling crisis in the early a 190s, then the asian financial crisis, argentina, russia. a whole series of economies blew up because of the excessive movement of liquidity from one part of the world to another. and in a way, the people that had formulated this theory of globalization, of, you know, neoliberal economists in the united states were hoist on their own -- when it came home to roost in that financial crisis. and i think, you know, this has been well documented, the rise rising ininequality that has occurred precisely in those countries that adopted these neoliberal policies first has exacerbated the kind of feelings of class conflict and working

class people being left behind that in some way is at the root of the rise of populism in the second decade of the 21st century. now, the -- so that's, that's neoliberalism on the right. there's another, i think, distortion the of liberalism on the left that you might label woke liberalism. and i think that when a lot of people criticize liberalism, they're not criticizing classical liberalism as i defined it, they're create sizing -- criticizing woke liberalism. and there's a several aspects to this transformation of the way that the left thought about inequality. so what define cans -- defines a progressive, somebody on the left, is that you do worry about socioeconomic inequality, and you want to address that. in the 20th century, that

inequality was with understood in broad class terms. so, you know, a marxist believes that the world is fundamentally divided between bowrnlg who say and proletariat, and you need to equalize the outcomes by centralizing the means of production and so forth in order to solve that problem. as t we got to the end of the 2h century, the sources of inequality came to be redefined in much narrower terms so that it was no longer the inequality of these big social groups like the bourgeois, the proletariat, but it came to center on narrower groups that were defined by race, earth necessity, genders and then eventually -- ethnicity and eventually things like sexual orientation. inequality was seen not so much necessarily as economic inequality, but inequality of anything -- dignity where certain marginalized groups were notment respected by the rest of

society. i would say there's also a particular american element of this because of america's racial history. african-americans have been treated unjustly throughout the history of the country beginning with slavery, but even after the 13th, 14th, 15th amendments you have the continuation of the racial hierarchy that lasted really up until the civil rights movement. and i think that this then created a kind of focus and a mechanism for subsequent groups seeking social justice to, you know, fall into with that same category of civil rights that needed to be corrected and use the same techniques like instead of relying on legislatures, relying on courts in order to, you know,, achieve those equal outcomes. and so inequality morphed in a

way from marxist class struggle to what we now call identity politics. all right. so i want to make really clear, since i've been involved in arguments over this for the last several years ever since i wrote a book called "identity," what's wrong with identity politics. i want to be clear there is a liberal form of identity politics and an illiberal form. i have no problem with the liberal form. liberal form, you would say, goes something like this: people are treated as members of groups. they are marginalized as members of groups. this was classically most true with african-americans simply on the basis of their seven color did not have -- skin color did not have equal rights. in a liberal society, if you are part of a group that has been mistreated on your basis of your

common identity that is the source of your mistreatment, you mobilize, you enter the political system, you make demands on the political system to treat you equally, that was the essence of martin luther king's civil rights movement, right? he got up on the steps of the lincoln memorial and said, you know, i look forward to the day when littlei black children wil be treated the same as little white children. so that is a plea for a marginalized group that organizes on the basis of an identity cat gore -- category to a basically demand equal liberal rights to enter into that same liberal society. what's an illiberal form of identity politics is basically when that identity category becomes essentialized meaning that it's the most important thing that anyone if can know about you, your skin color, your gender, your sexual orientation and that that membership in a group will trump anything that

you've accomplished as an individual. that is an illiberal form of sidentity politics, and that's the part of identity politics that i think becomes very problematic in a liberal society. when you give out jobs, places in universities, promotions and the like simply on the basis of those identity categories, that violates this fundamental liberal principle that we regard individual finish we regard people w in the society as individuals, we judgege them on their individual characteristics, their skills, talents, accumulated abilities and, you know, their natural abilities. and if you treat people simply as members of groups, you're basically violating that underlying premise, and that is illiberal. lot of ways that this, a lote' of forms that this can,

this can take in terms of the way that people are treated. i think that there's a big controversy right now over things like cancel culture or woke culture. what i would say in general, and i've argued this, you know, many different forums, is that i guess the big argument that i keep having is how broad and how fundamental is this. because a lot of conservatives would argue that we're living under a woke tyranny where every institution in the society is dominated by these identity categories and that's, you know, if you violate the kind of politically correct attitudes towards those categories, you're going to be canceled. from me point of view, this is not the america that i experience. i think that, first of all, these identity categories really do apply to a certain relatively narrow set of issues related to

civil rights and related to, you know, essentially race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation and the like and that we continue to enjoy liberal freedoms in almost every other regard. is so you can say whatever the hell you want about president biden or, you know, candidate donald trump and nobody's going to put you in jail. i think that people that think thatou we are living under a liberal tyranny ought to go live in a country like russia or china, a genuine tyranny where you cannot make political statements that contravene, you know, the accept accepted ones by the political authorities. and so in that respect there is, i think, a hire around a key and a surgeon priority -- hire. arthel: city and liberal rights in which freedom of speech, freedom of association, this ability to speak out on apolitical issues is important. it's being eroded by certain parts of the progressive left

are, butn i don't think that it is a general characteristic of the society as a whole. but that's something that we can argue about. i the other thing that's been, that has been going on really does have to do with that second characteristic of liberalism that i said is a good thing which has to do with autonomy. so the original understanding of human autonomy, this is the thing that gave human beings dignity in the eyes of god, really had to do with the ability to make certain moral choices. but those moral choices were ones that were determined not by human beings, but byy god. they existed9, human beings existed in a moral framework that they themselves did not invent. and and their moral, moral judgments of them would be made concerning the wayju that they lived up to these

externally-imposed rules, and that was the essence, let's say, of martinis luther's basic christian freedom. as time went on over the last couple of centuries, the realm of autonomy has expanded pretty relentlessly so that by the time you get to figures like friedrich in each cha, at the end of the 19th century he can creates his character who is free was not only does -- because not only does he have the ability to obey the law or not, he can make up the law himself. he can create the moral frame ifwork. and, you know, this is what leads to what is sometimes labeled ex, pressive individualism where your individuality extends all the way to your ability to establish the moral rules under which you are living. and obviously, you can't have a society if this is the case. because what is a society?

if a society are shared rules thatat how collective action tht allow people to live peacefully with oney another, and if everybody gets to make up their owne rules, that's not going to happen. and, you know, this expansion of the realm of autonomy has been, has been growing over time. some of it is actually abetted by changes in technology. so, for example, if you think about something like gender equality, a division of labor between men and women made sense in a hunter-gather society, in an agrarian society. and, you know, in many respects in an industrial society. because your ability to do useful work let's say in an industrial society depended on upper body strength and your request ability to lift really heavy objects, dig ditches, you know, this sort of thing. when you go through the kind of economic, socioeconomic

transitions that we have seen and particularly the transition into a post-industrial society in which a majority of people doing useful work are not out there doing ditches or lifting, you know, big bills of -- bales of cotton or, you know, steel bars, of sitting in front of a computer for eight hours a day typing things into the computer screen. that is a world in which women naturally have a much, a much larger place in the work force. and i would say that, you know, one of the biggest social changes that took place beginning in about the mid 1960s was the entry of hundreds of millions of women into the work force across the world beginning in advanced industrial countries that had already made in this transition into postindustrial societies,

but now it's really happening universally. and in this case, it is technology that has really allowed women to occupy a superior with place in those societies in many respects because, quite frankly, women are better at most jobs than men are at a certain age. .. shifts in the nature of gender relations across every society that has undergone this kind of shift. i think it is wrong to say this is simply an ideological mining ideology was part of it but feminism the belief in a women's

equality was obviously something that complemented the shift in workplaces. orit is also something that is fundamentally created by the technological nature of this new emergent society that we have been living in. that is a respect in which autonomy has been abetted by technology. i think the latest front tier and this a battle only has to do with human biology. when you think about something like assertions of gender fluidityy that underlies all of the tron's agent activist agenda it would not be possible again without the medical technologies that supposedly make this possible. and so this is another set of developments that has changed the perceived nature of what

liberalism it represents. i think one of the unfortunate things is and now there are many people in the world. authoritarian willing to take a woke of liberalism fell about political rights to equally enter the marketplace if you listen to some like victor or von and vladimir putin it's about lgbt cute rights there is that element fundamental understanding of classical liberalism. it's used to understand and

undermine the legitimacy of the liberal project as a whole. the next time you hear one of these are profoundly illiberal authoritarian leaders criticizing liberalism and illiberal societies. said he is building and illiberal democracy. that is in fact what is done liberal democracy constitutional checks and balances democracy meaning free and fair elections to use the democratic apart of the liberal democracy to attack the liberal part. once you attack the illiberal part the democratic part to change the rules under which

elections occur which also happened in hungary. make sure you never lose another election by gerrymandering and sose forth. this is not based on a serious critique of classical c liberalism. it's based on ais critique of a certain kind of local liberalism. that neoliberalism by contrast is the easiest to reverse. because it simply based on policies. i think in the united states today you seen a very substantial walking back from neoliberalism. in the 19 '90s you have that washington census. this belief by virtually every economist you needed to deregulate, private ties so on and so forth. and today few people believe and that extreme a form.

if you look at actual policy we return on of the 1950s or 60s. industrial policy is made a huge comeback under the bite administration. the state is being used to promote semi conductors, batteries, a whole lot of strategic technologies but those are things that can be walked back simply by changes in policy. it'sit harder to walk back or we liberalism and the sense it is embedded inn a certain understanding of rights and autonomy people are less willing to give it up. but on the other hand i do think you already see signs if you mandate policies that are fundamentally on natural they are not going to stick. i will give you one little anecdote in support of this view. there is an italian journalist

named alexander stella wrote a very nice book last year. the sullivan institute was a colt that existed in the upper west side of new york city. they had a lot of well-to-do artists. jackson pollock and stanley greenberg the critic a lot of well educated, very creative people that were sucked into a colt that believed they were all very much on the left. they all believe the fundamental injustice wasic not the private ownership of property. but the nuclear family. and unless you destroyed the nuclear family, you could not achieve a marxist egalitarian society. said the sole of anyone's in the upper west side hideouts actually try to do this he. they wouldth take children away from their mothers and have them

raised by somebody else because they thought the most evil person the child's life is goins to be the mother who would become a dictator and setnd a model for dictatorship politically it later on in life. it is a hard book to read because of the personal costs this doctrine imposes on the cult members that lived in this colt. it was pretty horrendous in terms of direct childhoods and very unhappy children. very warped individuals came out of thisth movement. if you sit what happened to it? wasn't this the cutting edge at the individual liberation? at that time a lot of people believed it was. today it does not exist. because this idea that somehow parents of the nuclear family are deeply unjust. it's simply not true.

you get in a way a kind of a natural evolution to a form a social relationship that actually makes sense both for individuals but also in terms of darwinian underpinnings and so forth. i think you are also seeing something of a reaction against certain forms of identity politics. dei was not controversial five years ago. it's usually controversial on many campuses and in many boardrooms in the united states. i do not know what's going to happen in these areas. these are the areas that drive conservatives really crazy. because you make free choices you can discuss things nothing

is ever permanent. if something does not make sense like ripping children out of their mother's arms and having strangers raise them it is not going to continue. there's going to be an adjustment. it may take several years for the adjustment to occur. i do think there is a self corrective mechanism that applies to these kinds of social changes. now, some of them because they are rooted very deeply are not going to be reversed. women and the workplace is something that is dictated the nature of economic production today.g becoming stay-at-home wives and mothers as in previous generations. some of these social are inevitable. others are much more voluntary breadth of voluntary ones are things that in liberal society as we could discuss. i am going to end just on the

following observation. was it built sitting there, this is something he as argued in the past. wanted to defend liberalism in positive terms. liberal societies the kind of freedom f and dignity accords is members to see most powerful argument. there's alsoso a very powerful argument which has to do with what is the d alternative? i think part of the reason we are seeing the rise of populous nationalist movements all over the world is that liberalism has been so successful. it has produced, with the exception 70 years of peace and prosperity in north america. in europe, northeast asia in societies that have adopted this kind of liberal o democracy. i just think it's is a human characteristic you begin taking these good times for granted.

i had a line in my original book or i said you cannot struggle against injustice a struggle against justice. people want to dope is struggle all too easy for young people who are living where the most prosperous, freest societies with the greatest degree of opportunity. they say what else is new? very nice. i want something more. that is one of the sources it's taking for granted the liberalism i outlined it's taking them for granted that has led a lot of people but especially young people on the left and the right to say it is not enough. i want more. and what social justice i what community i want a stronger sense of bonds with my fellow

citizens. realistically if you look at these societies that are based on a one of these stronger principles it does not end well. you think india right now it was one of the premier liberal fsocieties to emerge after its independence in the 1940s. right now bjp the hindu nationalist party in my minister trying to shift national identity to one that is based is 200 million muslims. christians and piracies a lot of people who are not hindus. the left of the national identity that's deeply problematic in a society that has that kind of history of communal violence based on the secretary and differences. i don't see how you can run a country like india except on liberal principles. that is the world we are facing

today. with that, me close and see if you have any comments or questions. [applause] [inaudible] i would like to be specific. if you look at the measurement and public institution. all of these mere years until the last four years. >> it has taken a precipitous decline.ec that is one measurement.

look at struggles with recruiting maybe that's another indicator this is no longer an institution people are anxious to join. what are your thoughts on that? works are several causes to that decline of trust. it's interesting. that's across the birth domestic institutions in the united states. it's also true of a lot of countries that are outside the u.s. similar loss and trust. i think it is due to several factors. most important i think is technology. so much of our lives have moved online since about 2010, 2011. that permits people to live in what one of my colleagues were able they spoke realities.

you can believe things and believe they are empirically supportive. that are completely false. you are living in a universe there are thousands, millions of people that agree on these false premises. vaccine the nihilism or something like cap the republican party believes more than half believes the 202020 election was stolen. similar percentage believes vaccines are more harmful thaney helpful. this could not exist in a pre-internet world in which certain elite institutions had credibility and the ability to filterlt that kind of informati. you know, those of us who have been looking at this phenomenon since 2016 have always said social media, the internet is onthe sources of this.

i always thought it was one of six different things. hewitt economic inequality, cultural conflicts, demagogic politicians and so forth. i now think this is of those explanations probably the dominant one that in my mind is causing this lack of trust. when internet was privatized in the 1990s everyone, including myself said great. this is going to democratize information. anyone can have access to any information they want. information is power therefore this be profoundly good for democratic societies. it turned out part of that was right. it didid democratize. but good information is not necessarily democratic. it is not what anyone just thanks of or wishes for sitting at a computer screen. there is a whole hierarchy of institutions we have to add

credibility to empirical factual information. those have really been undermined by the ability of anyone to say anything they want on the internet. that is one issue. i think again the causality to distribute fairly because there are multiple causes. obviously economic inequality has led to this. the elites have managed to seal themselves off from a lot of the world around them that they helped to create. that causes resentment. there are cultural issues that are very divisive. some ways are more important than the pure economic inequalities. i would say actually is the technology factor that in my mind is really central to the drop in trust in institutions. kirk salutes her. i had a question and in regards

to that, about enforcing or pulling the plug on the internet, how can we observe the take for granted our modern democracies asl well as trying o mitigate the spreading of false information? >> it is a really tough question. the reason it is a tough question is that right now i've got two choices in front of you. either you can have the big internet platforms, the duke content monitoring. while at stanford we've been looking for this a long time but we have a cyber policy center that was created several years ago that has looked at is looket disinformation, content moderation. first of all you have to moderate the content. there's so much garbage on the internet if the platforms did not do basic filtering of that information, you would have beheadings, glory of violence, pornography, stop nobody would want to see. so they have this basic function

of acting as filters. but the big problem comes in political speech. there is a really big legitimacy problem with the for-profit private company making basic decisions as to what is it is not acceptable political speech. i do not think they have got the right to do that for on the other hand we don't the government to do that either. you don't want the government to set up a bureau that says this is factually true in the sort of thing. we came up with a solution. i chaired a stanford working group on platform scale which come up with a concept i increasingly think is the only solution to this problem. we called middleware. so what is the problem with big platforms like facebook,

twitter, whatever it's called now. google. the problem really is their ability to reach these enormous audiences and to either amplify or silence certain voices that is the fundamental problem. it is not censorship. a lot of people on the right say it is a very powerful political tool that can be used for good or ill. you do not want the government making those decisions. you do not want these big private companies to do that. our view was the only way to solve it is by competition. you basically want to create a layer of outsourced content moderation companies. you could specify what kind of content you want to hear or see. if you're doing an amazon search you can say only want to buy american. or you are looking for political

newsr morgan talk about environment or the southern border. you would get a dial on your feet where you can adjust that to more or less. more diversity, less diversity. the important virtue of this is it would put the user in control of content moderation. the user could himself or herself make basic decisions about what came across through oofacebook or x or whatever. we may be moving in the direction of something like that. there has been a proliferation of platforms. all i think is necessary is to have competition in this space. you're not relying on the three threegigantic platforms for your news. and they've got blue sky, mastodon, there's actually a protocol if you post something on threads and also shows up on

mastodon. if they join the same consortium all these platforms can reach much broader audiences. but again you would be of control of what you saw and what other people saw. that is what is critical. what is critical is to reduce the scale of the content moderation and increase its diversity. hand back control of individual users. we got stuck because we did not sit economic model to make this viable. maybe it is appearing, maybe the market is providing that itself. last one okay. click something struck me. you said at one point if something does not make sense is not going to continue. >> if something is deeply unnatural it's probably not going to continue. >> okay. ed and nick's cure essay which

already referred and patrick referred earlier that you wrote long ago, i think you made the claim or at least suggested that if something makes sense is not going to end. that is a liberalism. it seems your belief then as now is a liberal lease it makes sense. my question is basically this. could you make the case play devils advocate for yourself. make the case it doesn't. do so t it may be in light of te case you made against liberalism long ago which consisted and some part at least in the essay and the suggestion liberalism ends in boredom. you ended the essay by saying of boredom the prospect of centuries of boredom might scent history going. again is that still your view boredom is the point of view from which liberalism does not make sense it reduces us to a state of boredom? or would you update that in

light of subsequent events? >> of us trying to explain i think liberalism does make sense. it doesn't make sense to a lot of people at every moment. >> but what is there considered argument? ask as i said there is an adjustment mechanism that has to happen where you try different versions of liberalism nuts thas experiment we been going through neil liberalism woke liberalism and so forth. i think there is a way of adjusting of these things really do not seem to be making sense or making people happier that you're going to try something else. that's one of the virtues of a liberalism. i do actually think at the end of history something driving all a lot of people towards this right wing populism. that combined with the fact you can live in this online fantasy

world we are completely disconnected with reality. like i said you can't serve in surreal injustice to struggle against justice. i think a lot of people are falling for that. i meet in europe we have them saying we are living under the journey of the horrible european union. get real. european union is a bunch of bureaucrats that make up these annoying rules. you s are still living an incredibly free society. but you want to have an enemy and you want to have some thing to struggle against so you turn this into the monster that you are dealingon with. chris okay, go ahead progress is going to say it seems to me based on what you've just said it's not simply a boredom that is the problem but, the lack of

seriousness of one's own life and the lack of self-respect one has given you got no overarching moral purpose. >> the original end of history i said this desire for recognition as it is important. there are two types. it's where you demand equal recognition to other people but also make a low where you want to be seen as greater. and those are intentioned. obviously if i'm recognized as superior you are going to be recognized as inferior. the trick in the liberal society is to neuter and put it into i originally thought donald trump would be satisfied just by having all these casinos and that would take care. unfortunately that turned out not to be the case. but i think there is a side of human nature that demands recognition.

in a peaceful prosperous boring a liberal society you don'tri necessarily get it. maybe just being a ceo or climbing 10ma himalayan peaks maybe that's not enough for some people. [applause] >> thank you very much for sharing your thoughts on old liberalism at the 2024 conference. liberal democracy challenging critics. our last panel. of the day will take place in 10 minutes. we would ask you to get up, stretch your legs come on back we will conclude with a look at liberalism and its application to military context. [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] cook is their relationship shouldn't soft and hard money in the pack and super pac? can you explain the difference between dual federalism and cooperative federalism? chris liu student planning to take advanced placement u.s. government politics advance? if so join us in "washington journal" live saturday at 9:00 a.m. eastern for our annual cramming for the exam was special to get the best tips and strategies to succeed on a t kp government teacher sunshine and from el dorado high school in californiat will take your calls and text questions on the content and structure of this ruse exam. >> key areas to focus on founding documents require the e supreme court cases that are required. you know part of the example come from those. >> get your test questions ready

and participate by calling in or asking a question from facebook on x and @cspanwj or at # cre for the exam. ♪ sunday on q&a former rhode island democratic congressman patrick kennedy author profile and mental health courage talks about americans who struggle with mental illness the role of family members play in their care. >> of my own case with my mother, my brother sister and i had to get guardianship over my mother. we saved her life so she could be around with my kids. my kids never met my father obviously who died before they were born. but they got to meet my mom. they got to meet my mom because my brother, sister and i went to court to get guardianship over our mother. to keep her from killing herself. she was so happy. at the time she was not happy.

she ended up being so grateful she was make it to the other side because we intervened. >> patrick kennedy with his book profiles and mental health courage sunday night at 8:00 p.m. eastern c-span q and a. you closer to q&a and all of our podcast on a free c-span now app. ♪ c-span is your unfiltered view of government but we are funded by these television companies and more including comcast. >> are you thinking this is just a community center? it is way more than that. comcast is part of 1000 committee centers to create wi-fi enabled so students from low-income families can get the tools they need to be ready for anything. parks comcast support c-span as a public service along with these other television providers. giving a front row seat to democracy.