PRESTOPUNDIT -- "It's a team sport, baby!"

If you care what Francis Fukuyama has to say, read this. Virginia Postrel could tell you that this is far from the truth:

One of Bush's first speeches in 2001 was on stem-cell policy. Most politicians put forward a proposition and use arguments selectively to support it. Bush did the opposite. He presented both sides of the case in a balanced way, so carefully you didn't know which way he'd jump until the end. That's a sign of someone who's serious about getting it right, and about opening the debate.

And in the context of national strikes which have rocked France (and these sorts of things happen routinely in Europe), what to make of this?

The US is more individualist .. but also more disorderly. In the EU states have a higher degree of social solidarity ..

Well, it's nonsense, of course. Fukuyama has got to be the champion second-hand dealer in ideas of all time. He gets paid the big bucks for saying profound things like this:

The US is built on Lockean principles (derived from the British liberal philosopher John Locke). There’s a contract between state and people, and a belief in limited government. On the Continent their vision of the state owes more to (the French philosopher) Jean-Jacques Rousseau. They see the state as an expression of the ‘general will’.

While reading Fukuyama I always get the urge to scream, "Tell me something I don't know." It's like listening to the David Gergen of the college dorm philosophical bull session.

Posted by Greg Ransom