By Oh Young-jin
Assistant Managing Editor
Fukuyama was wrong; Friedman sold us out; Yale should have flunked Bush, but Don McClean was half right.
If you take this statement with the degree of earnestness required when solving word jumble puzzles, please don't. Any word you get doesn't exist in a dictionary. Besides, this is just half of the story I want to share with you. For the curious types, read on.
Francis Fukuyama prophesied about the end of history in his 1992 book, The End of History and the Last Man (I can only barely figure who it was).
His statement that the Cold War ended in victory for Western liberal democracies over the Communists, bringing a seemingly never-ending tale of human struggle to a close was considered bold. The historian implied that the United States would emerge as superman, saving the world from evil and leading it to eternal prosperity.
In hindsight, however, I think that Fukuyama was a copycat of Marx who once excited blurry-eyed idealists with his theory of the end of ``all hitherto existing society'' giving way to a utopian realm where all class distinctions no longer existed. Fukuyama's superman must have been the main character in a movie, not an evil type from the original created by Siegel and Shuster. Maybe, he had read Nietzche and making a spur-of-the moment decision, reinvented his superman on the basis of the German philosopher's ubermensch.
A repudiation on his assertion of the end of history and the appearance of the last man requires no more than a look at the chaotic state the world is in right now.
Tom Friedman, a New York Times columnist, published his best-selling book, The World is Flat, which I didn't bother to read but believe was a sequel of sorts to his 1999 book, The Lexus and the Olive Trees. Copernicus would turn in his grave if he knew that Friedman contradicted his 500-year-old heliocentric theory that has been regarded to be true ever since, selling hundreds of thousands of copies in the process.
For Friedman's Lexus book, he claimed that the Internet and the democratization of technology, are unstoppable forces of globalization, making national borders as we know them disappear and creating an ``electronic herd'' that roams across the globe. The crux of Friedman's argument was that, with the power of Wall Street, the United States would be a Roman Empire that would continue for centuries to come. Now, look at what has happened. Bear Stearns is dead, with the remaining members of the Wall Street pack reeling from write-offs and -downs triggered by the subprime mortgage crisis. Friedman doesn't seem to be writing about his globalization vision any more, instead focusing on promoting alternative energy and bashing President Bush.
Fukuyama provided a theoretical background for a policy of unilateralism the Bush administration had propagated well into its second term, while Friedman preached for fruits this unilateralism could bring to the American people. Do I need to explain more? I don't think so.
Now, the Yale University part.
Bush was a history major in this venerable ivory tower of higher learning and confessed that he was a C-student. I don't dispute that a history major could make a good president, but to be the leader of the free world, surely a B average of higher is required.
In my favorite song, American Pie, from his 1971 eponymous album, Don McClean poeticized that the music died when his idolized singers were killed in a plane crash. I do not entirely agree, believing music didn't die that day but is still up and running, metamorphosing itself through electronic files. However, I think that he was momentarily endowed with divine insight, when at the end of the song he sang, ``The three men I admire most ― the father, son and the holy ghost ― they caught the last train for the coast.''
Now, here is the second half of the story I promised.
First, in the latest round of strategic economic dialogue with the United States in Annapolis, MD., Zhou Xiachouan, governor of the People's Bank of China, pointed out that it was the first time that China needed to learn from American mistakes, quite a turnaround from its status of being an ardent student eager to imitate the inner workings of American capitalism. U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who rescued Wall Street from the brink of collapse together with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke earlier this year, listened to Zhou haranguing about the necessity of U.S. propping up the value dollar. The Chinese accused Washington of exacerbating the multiple crises of oil, food and other commodities.
This reminds me of the dying days of the Soviet Union, climaxing with the scene of Boris Yeltsin waging his finger and chiding Mikhail Gorbachev. Yeltsin became the first President of the Russian Federation, while Gorbachev is now modeling for Louis Vuitton.
Let's move to Dublin, Ireland. Last month, the Irish electorate rejected the Lisbon Treaty, a watered-down version of the European Constitution that France and the Netherlands had previously sabotaged. The two rejections represent a far cry between visionary Euro-centrists and mundane Europeans about the idea of European integration. In summary, Federal Europe is no longer a viable idea and gone is the visionaries' dream of placing a strong Europe back at the center of the world. A gamut of European leaders makes observers wonder whether they have the backbone needed. Gordon Brown is a poor carbon copy of Tony Blair; Angela Merkel is a shifting shadow of Chancellor Helmut Kohl; Sarkozy and Berlusconi are what you and I think they are. Admittedly, Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister, reigns supreme despite his transition from president to premier, with state coffers flush with money from European capitals in exchange for oil and gas. The Economist magazine would have been given more credit if on its recent cover cartoon, it had placed this European quartet inside Putin's suit coat pocket together with his successor Medvedev.
Back in Seoul. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recently visited South Korea, trying without success to reassure an angry Korean public of mad cow-free U.S. beef. Perhaps, 20 years ago, her message could have made a difference.
As I said at the start of the column, don't get your mind boggled on my account. Just in case you feel as agitated as I am, think of Fukuyama, Friedman, Bush and other leaders in their fields of expertise that were proven to be wrong. We humans are bound to be wrong more often than than right. In the meantime, let's just wait for McClean's most admired trio to come home from their vacation on the beach.