In this short, clear account of our current political discontents, Fukuyama offers an essential defense of a revitalized liberalism for the twenty-first century. The result, Fukuyama argues, has been a fracturing of our civil society and an increasing peril to our democracy. Developed in the wake of Europe’s wars over religion and nationalism, liberalism is a system for governing diverse societies. Classical liberalism is in a state of crisis. As the renowned political philosopher Francis Fukuyama shows in Liberalism and Its Discontents, the principles of liberalism have also, in recent decades, been pushed to new extremes by both the right and the left: neoliberals made a cult of economic freedom, and progressives focused on identity over human universality as central to their political vision. A short book about the challenges to liberalism from the right and the left by the bestselling author of The Origins of Political Order. Conservatives complain that liberalism empties the common life of meaning. Who counted as full human beings worthy of universal rights was contested for centuries, and only recently has this circle expanded to include women, African Americans, LGBTQ+ people, and others. In America, many people were denied equality before the law. It's no secret that liberalism didn't always live up to its own ideals.
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