Francis Fukuyama: Making Identity Politics Work

“One of the core conclusions of Fukuyama’s Identity is that identity politics—the ‘demand for [political] recognition of one’s identity,’ whether that be a racial, ethnic, religious, or national identity—is here to stay.”

Much like his presidential campaign, the central theme of President Joe Biden’s inaugural address could be summed up in one word: Unity. “Today, on this January day, my whole soul is in this: Bringing America together. Uniting our people.” Around what, exactly, does President Biden want to unite the American people? Two things—one worthy of unity, the other not as much.

The less worthy of complete consensus is his policy program. James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 10 that “As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it,” as we thankfully are in a democratic republic such as ours, “different opinions will be formed.” Forging unity on how exactly to respond to climate change or the economic travails wrought by the Coronavirus (COVID-19) is not going to happen. We should not call for unity at junctures where good-faith debate, disagreement, and compromise are, in fact, needed.

As National Review’s Kevin Williamson wrote in response to President Biden’s inauguration, “The United States does not suffer from a lack of sufficient unity. The United States thrives on the opposite of unity: disagreement, debate, competition, rivalry. Totalitarian countries have unity. Democratic republics have disagreement. That is why we have elections and legislatures. Disagreement is good. If you know how to do it.” Williamson is correct; however, an amendment is in order: Democratic republics thrive on disagreement and debate within certain boundaries. Everything cannot be up for grabs, which is why we have certain Constitutional provisions, such as the Bill of Rights, that place certain rights beyond the reach of majorities. As George F. Will notes in Statecraft as Soulcraft while reflecting on Abraham Lincoln’s resistance to the Kansas-Nebraska Act and his insistence on the verity of the Declaration’s ode to equal human dignity, “there can be closed questions in an open society. Indeed, a society that has no closed questions cannot count on remaining an open society.”

And this brings us to the second, more admirable, form of unity that President Biden advocates—a unity around the American creed of constitutionalism, democratic process, and a reliance on politics, not violence, to settle disputes. President Biden stated, in what I suspect might become the most enduring line of the address, that “We must end this uncivil war that pits red against blue, rural versus urban, conservative versus liberal.” Disagreements are to be expected, even desired, but they must be confined “within the guardrails of our Republic”—guardrails like democratic procedure, non-violence, and the rule of law.