One has to worry about national identity as you cannot have legimitate power and a democracy in a nation state without a national identity. — ssu

Does he give any indication of what the argument is for that claim?

The basic question here is if Fukuyama is correct about identity politics or is this identity politics more of a media talking point than a change in political reality? — ssu

I think we should be skeptical of any claim that a large amount of people are all thinking about something in the same way, that they're all focused on the same things, etc It's wiser to read this as being more about a shift a la a statistical trend that's noticeable.

Fukuyama says the desire to accepted as equal in a society is a cohesive agent and the desire to develop a distinct identity is divisive:

"Marginalized groups increasingly demanded not only that laws and institutions treat them as equal to dominant groups but also that the broader society recognize and even celebrate the intrinsic differences that set them apart."

What Fukuyama leaves out of this account is whether the demands to be treated equally were met. It also leaves out the unpleasant fact that a "celebration of intrinsic differences" is what the "dominant" group has been doing for centuries.
Without those elements kept in view, Fukuyama's account gives the impression that the marginalized groups got the equality they asked for and are now crying out for something more. A little extra pudding, please.

That syllogism has been a right wing talking point for decades. So, what does that make Francis Fukuyama?

Another fatal flaw committed by Fukuyama through assigning a divisive animus to all forms of self identification, per se, is that it provides no explanation why all forms of life protected by the Establishment of Religion clause have failed to destroy the country yet. The whole point of setting up a shared public space this way was in order to allow groups to withdraw from it as much as they like as long as those actions do not cancel the shared public space.
By Fukuyama's measure, there is no way to distinguish between the desire to be an Amish person and the desire to be a self identified Nazi.

[quote-Fukuyama]The left continued to be defined by its passion for equality—by isothymia—but its agenda shifted from the earlier emphasis on the working class to the demands of an ever-widening circle of marginalized minorities.[/quote]

Tired of talking about narcissism? Here are 3 new Greek terms to wear out: Thymos, megalothymia, and Isothymia.

Megalothymia and isothymia are the two elements of thymos.

Thymos is a philosophical concept introduced by Plato as one of the three motivations of man, the first two being needs and desires. Thymos is the emotional need for every human to be recognized by others as human, and deserving of respect. Megalothymia specifically is the need to be recognized as superior to others, while isothymia is the need to be recognized as merely equal to others.

The nice thing about this pair of terms is that there is a built in ambiguity that will lead to lots of disputes as to whether transgendered people, for instance, are asking to be merely equal to others or not. Maybe they are claiming to be more special than everybody else. If I assert the isothymia of white people, is that believable? Everybody knows that white people think they are superior. If you are against open borders you must be a white supremacist. (The Guardian carried a piece the other day in which the author equated the Republican Party with white supremacy.) Thymos = isothymia = megalothymia.

Orthodox Marxists understand what the working class is: It is people whose sustenance is dependent on getting paid for their labor. The working class is not equivalent to blue-collar workers who use wrenches and hammers, or forges or stamping machines. Secretaries wearing high heels (nothing else, of course), accountants wearing suits, skilled technicians running cameras in Hollywood or MRI machines at the hospital, nurses, check out people, philosophy professors, bell hops, etc. are all working class. Why is a philosophy professor working class? Because if he or she should be fired, he or she is likely to find themselves in dire economic straits later, if not within the same month.

@ssu: I know you understand this, but a lot of people do not. They think that if you work in an office, drive a decent car, and have a mortgage, then you are "middle class" and not "working class". The idea of "middle class" is defined by not using wrenches and hammers and living a slightly up-scale life style which probably floats on a pool of debt. For the uninitiated, "middle class" properly means "entrepreneurs who own their small businesses or professional offices. A successful law practice is "middle class". A successful surgical practice is "middle class". Owning a plumbing company employing a dozen plumbers and additional helpers is "middle class". Owning a batch of small office buildings and collecting rent on them is "middle class".

The old Dutch and English families who still own property underneath famous buildings in New York have been collecting rent for decades -- in some cases centuries. They are not dependent on their labor for their sustenance. Neither are the major heirs of the Rockefeller fortune. Bill gates, Warren Buffet, Fuckerberg, Bezos, Page, Brin, et al are not dependent on a daily, weekly, or monthly wage. Maybe Bezos was when he just started out, but when you are worth $150,000,000,000...

Why our hipster marxists can't understand the basic facts of class definition and class interest is beyond me. It is not that complicated. And their ignorance has led them to go in search of exotic and more interesting problems than those of people who are merely forced to work for a living. Gender confused people fill the bill! So do gay people. Migrants and Illegals -- darker skinned or not. (New York has a lot of Irish illegals.) Ahhhh, vive le différence! (Sounds better in French than in German -- vive la Unterschied.)

Thanks for the responses, everyone.

Does he give any indication of what the argument is for that claim? — Terrapin Station

I think the link between a nation state and it's citizens, which then as citizens of that state do share a common identity, is rather obvious. Once that common identity is meaningless, you can have at worst a civil war. After all, how many in Jugoslavia believed in the 1990's that "they are, first and foremost, Jugoslavians"? Suddenly you were a Serb, a Slovenian, a Croat, a muslim Bosniak or an christian (Serbian) Bosniak. Not a Jugoslav citizen anymore.

It's wiser to read this as being more about a shift a la a statistical trend that's noticeable. — Terrapin Station

Might be so. Nearly everything today has it's roots in the past and hence every topic or discourse can be argued that it's not anything new.

The basic question here is if Fukuyama is correct about identity politics or is this identity politics more of a media talking point than a change in political reality? — ssu

The entire concept of identity politics has still been based on the notions of ideology, rationally behaving political actors (groups or individuals), and political representation. Haven’t we already seen the failure of this theoretical scheme in Fukuyama’s “ End of the History”? Yet, Fukuyama himself has not cared about choosing different concepts. One could find out that the politics of identities has based on the same theoretical base as the notion of populism and Steve Bannon’s thesis and narrative that “The future of Western politics is populist, not liberal”. Yet, both should be explained using more fundamental and appropriate concepts.
There are attempts to conceive contemporary politics as politics of affect. Understood ideologically, affect is the set of means that the dominating group has applied to make the dominated ones to mislead their own interests and instead to invest into the foreign ones. Nevertheless, affect can be understood as the primary process, whereas ideology has become a secondary effect. Accordingly, politicians and acting groups have not acted and thought primarily pursuing long-term plans and programs. What are matters – an immediate effect of catching a maximum of public attention, getting a positive resonance in mass media, changing a focus of discussion to a more appropriate one, adjusting a discourse and lexicon to momentarily political needs, etc.

The origin of identity politics goes way back. It used to be part of the Soviet agenda on ideological subversion, but its concepts are much older than that. Basically, what it comes down to is that polarizing influences, no matter what form they take, are destabilizing to a nation and thus it was in Soviet interest to foster and grow these influences in other nations, a lot of which was legal, overt influencing. They called it subversion. What the Soviet doctrine emphasized was that you cannot make people believe in things that they do not (want to) believe in, but you can take a belief that they hold and carry them along a path that will ensure they remain a destabilizing influence.

“There is nothing easier than self-delusion. Since what man desires, is the first thing he believes.”
- Demosthenes

You tell people what they want to hear (preferably from a position of some authority) and they will become even more convinced of their beliefs. There's a lot of material on this topic by an ex-KGB informant named Yuri Bezmenov. He defected to the west in 1970 and gave a number of lectures about Soviet influencing campaigns. He called these groups that the Soviets used for their purposes 'useful idiots'. Ignorant people who got fed the lies they wanted to hear and never realized they were being manipulated.

Of ignorant people there is no lack nowadays, and somewhere along the road western society has decided ignorant opinions are worth as much as educated opinions are worth as much as wise opinions. I have no problem entertaining the thought that maybe our society is full of useful idiots.

What Fukuyama leaves out of this account is whether the demands to be treated equally were met. — Valentinus

Well, that may what I left out from the quote from Fukuyama. He acknowledges that these before invisible minorities did have success and they indeed had been repressed.

Another fatal flaw committed by Fukuyama through assigning a divisive animus to all forms of self identification, per se, is that it provides no explanation why all forms of life protected by the Establishment of Religion clause have failed to destroy the country yet. The whole point of setting up a shared public space this way was in order to allow groups to withdraw from it as much as they like as long as those actions do not cancel the shared public space.
By Fukuyama's measure, there is no way to distinguish between the desire to be an Amish person and the desire to be a self identified Nazi. — Valentinus

I'm not so sure he is assigning a divisive animus to all form of self identification. But I guess his idea is that that the "you cannot relate to me or understand me as I'm x and you are y" is divisive. I think it's obvious from the next quote.

Civil rights activists in the United States demanded that the country fulfill the promise of equality made in the Declaration of Independence and written into the U.S. Constitution after the Civil War. This was soon followed by the feminist movement, which similarly sought equal treatment for women, a cause that both stimulated and was shaped by a massive influx of women into the labor market. A parallel social revolution shattered traditional norms regarding sexuality and the family, and the environmental movement reshaped attitudes toward nature. Subsequent years would see new movements promoting the rights of the disabled, Native Americans, immigrants, gay men and women, and, eventually, transgender people. But even when laws changed to provide more opportunities and stronger legal protections to the marginalized, groups continued to differ from one another in their behavior, performance, wealth, traditions, and customs; bias and bigotry remained commonplace among individuals; and minorities continued to cope with the burdens of discrimination, prejudice, disrespect, and invisibility.

This presented each marginalized group with a choice: it could demand that society treat its members the same way it treated the members of dominant groups, or it could assert a separate identity for its members and demand respect for them as different from the mainstream society. Over time, the latter strategy tended to win out: the early civil rights movement of Martin Luther King, Jr., demanded that American society treat black people the way it treated white people. By the end of the 1960s, however, groups such as the Black Panthers and the Nation of Islam emerged and argued that black people had their own traditions and consciousness; in their view, black people needed to take pride in themselves for who they were and not heed what the broader society wanted them to be. The authentic inner selves of black Americans were not the same as those of white people, they argued; they were shaped by the unique experience of growing up black in a hostile society dominated by whites. That experience was defined by violence, racism, and denigration and could not be appreciated by people who grew up in different circumstances.

I think the link between a nation state and it's citizens, which then as citizens of that state do share a common identity, is rather obvious. — ssu

Sure. That much is obvious. What's not obvious is the notion that you cannot have legimitate power and a democracy in a nation state without a national identity.

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Another fatal flaw committed by Fukuyama through assigning a divisive animus to all forms of self identification, per se, is that it provides no explanation why all forms of life protected by the Establishment of Religion clause have failed to destroy the country yet. The whole point of setting up a shared public space this way was in order to allow groups to withdraw from it as much as they like as long as those actions do not cancel the shared public space. — Valentinus

This is an interesting point. But aren't churches different because they express the other side of the coin rather strongly - the push for identity-suppressing social cohesion? They are tools for conformity and so "safe" in that sense.

The nice thing about this pair of terms is that there is a built in ambiguity that will lead to lots of disputes as to whether transgendered people, for instance, are asking to be merely equal to others or not. Maybe they are claiming to be more special than everybody else. If I assert the isothymia of white people, is that believable? Everybody knows that white people think they are superior. If you are against open borders you must be a white supremacist. (The Guardian carried a piece the other day in which the author equated the Republican Party with white supremacy.) Thymos = isothymia = megalothymia. — Bitter Crank

That's the problem. Vast majority of people don't have a problem for example with transgender people being treated equally, but many can get offended if one has to start referring themselves being of cis-gender because this rather small minority came up with the definition. And of course, everything concerning "white people" and the discourse goes quite nuclear, just like the debate about nuclear energy.

Why our hipster marxists can't understand the basic facts of class definition and class interest is beyond me. It is not that complicated. And their ignorance has led them to go in search of exotic and more interesting problems than those of people who are merely forced to work for a living. — Bitter Crank

Thanks Bitter, nice to hear that from an old school Marxist. :wink:

The problem is that class distinctions seem antiquated especially when many academic jobs, like teachers or military officers etc. are actually low paying jobs which previously weren't. The term middle class confuses this quite if then it's counterpart below is the underclass. And so do terms like the bourgeoisie and the proletariat seem something from only fit for the 19th Century and early 20th Century.

Over time, the latter strategy tended to win out: the early civil rights movement of Martin Luther King, Jr., demanded that American society treat black people the way it treated white people. By the end of the 1960s, however, groups such as the Black Panthers and the Nation of Islam emerged and argued that black people had their own traditions and consciousness; in their view, black people needed to take pride in themselves for who they were and not heed what the broader society wanted them to be.

Martin Luther King Jr. didn't demand to be treated like white people, he demanded that black people be treated as equal to white people. The signs the activists held to their chests said "I am a Man." They did not say "I am White."
Now Fukuyama argues that some people added a demand to this first one when they spoke of already having a culture and form of life that had its own value. For most of those who advocated for that message, it was bound up with the original demand to be recognized as a human being.

Fukuyama sells his idea of an added demand by saying that later generations had not experienced what the former generation had. After this, its just a bunch of complainers who are tired of being treated like white people.

Cue Newt Gingrich.

Sure. That much is obvious. What's not obvious is the notion that you cannot have legimitate power and a democracy in a nation state without a national identity. — Terrapin Station

Give an example. Do you have in mind another way how people could identify with their nation or is the whole identity issue meaningless?

But aren't churches different because they express the other side of the coin rather strongly - the push for identity-suppressing social cohesion? They are tools for conformity and so "safe" in that sense. — apokrisis

They push for cohesion within their group but that can stand in varying levels of tension with the "shared public space" that is specifically kept free of the workings of any particular voluntary community.
One of the obvious points of tension relate to the education of our children. Religious education is permitted but does run into restrictions developed through the norms of secular society and legal limits when the practices become criminal.
The other large area of tension regards involvement in means of production. The Amish of Pennsylvania are not competing for resources in the same manner as the Hasidim in Brooklyn.

Tzeentch, you are correct about the agenda of the Soviet Union, which actually has continued with Putin (which is no wonder, when you think where Putin comes from). Yet the fact is the Russians have been so successfull in their information warfare as there is obvious market for them. Americans left by themselves are quite capable of destabilizing their institutions and being sceptical about their government. It's just adding fuel to an already lit fire.

Perhaps when people don't support universal agendas anymore, they then go with identity politics.

They push for cohesion within their group but that can stand in varying levels of tension with the "shared public space" that is specifically kept free of the workings of any particular voluntary community. — Valentinus

Sure. I take it as basic to social structure that there is always a tension between the individual and the collective, the competitive and the co-operative. That dynamic is in itself the healthy one that a well-adapted social system is going to foster.

So my point was really that churches fit the democratic/enlightenment scheme because they are essentially pro-social. They foster community more than division. And then once the balance tips, we start calling it a cult, a sect, or whatever. That church is now seen as a divisive threat to the general public fabric.

So in the bigger picture, the modern version of religious tolerance is a way to neutralise churches as political forces. It gets them out of the workings of the state and gives them a community building role, along with sports clubs and all the other community level institutions.

I think this just helps to define the line when it comes to the assimilation vs multiculturalism debate. As a modern society, there is some optimal balance we would want to strike.

We can kind of sense how much diversity, how much homogeneity, is a healthy balance. And we wouldn't thus think that either diversity or homogeneity in themselves were the desirable goals. A sophisticated political position would be wanting more of both, not more of just one or other. And beyond that, more of both up to some understanding of what the long term social goal would be.

It just seems like a complete non-sequitur to me.

Imagine we have a nation state, and for whatever reason, there's some conceptual block where the citizenry have no notion of a unique ethnic or other cultural identity, etc.

So, the claim is that just in case the above obtains, that nation state can't practice democracy, they can't all vote on the laws they'll institute, because . . . well, I have no idea why we'd think that, because it seems like a complete non-sequitur. What in the world does the one have to do with the other?

...he is against identity politics and sees it as a danger for a functioning democracy as both sides, the left and the right has embraced this kind of politics. — ssu

They push for cohesion within their group but that can stand in varying levels of tension with the "shared public space" that is specifically kept free of the workings of any particular voluntary community. — Valentinus

The problem would seem to be the internet. The new shared public space without a stabilising "memory" to fix some sort of useful social goal in mind.

It is quite normal and indeed functional to have polarities or dichotomies. And the most productive divisions are those that are metaphysically complete - as in same vs different, competition vs co-operation, one vs many, integration vs differentiation, particular vs general. So a healthy society will be expressing some constructive balance of its tensions.

However, social discourse has changed in some essential way as it has moved from the old civics media age to the new social media age. As with everything, the internet disintermediates. It removes all the intermediaries that stand in the middle and "slowed things down". This removal of the middle ground can be free-ing. But it can also remove a lot of the machinery that represents some kind of collectively-adaptive memory. Sometimes things are being slowed down for good reason. Public institutions frame long-term truths and goals. They are designed to change slowly so that societies can be pointed towards long-term aims.

The social media internet strips out the kinds of checks and balances the old media had. Again, the old media had a lot of problems. It was in the pocket of the corporates and the states. On the other hand, governments and big business also represented institutional interests. They were part of the wisdom stabilising their societies in pursuit of relatively agreed long-term goals.

So the central question for me is about the nature of the internet as the new underpinning infrastructure of social discourse. Will it develop a sufficiently cohesive sense of purpose? Will it rise above the memes and hypes enough to develop far-sighted constraints?

The US might seem a hot mess for sure. But what is happening in India, or Ghana, or Chile? What does the new world order look like in terms of developing a modern institutional form?

I'm not assuming it is working, or not working. There sure is plenty of dysfunction any time you turn on the news. However that would seem the critical question. Trump and social justice warriors and all the other nonsense could be the true end of the old Enlightenment dream. Or it might be the noise masking the real deeper world social changes that will manifest.

Identity politics is clearly a symptom - but of what exactly?

Maybe the silliest part of Fukuyama's position would be the attempt to frame it still as a left vs right kind of thing. That feels so stale - the US dealing with its own "reds under the bed" existential threat. Or Europe still dealing with its industrial era class wars.

And then every generation has to discover what is going to be the agenda for social change. That is natural. So you have arguably the trajectory of 1950s counter-culture, 1980s slacker culture, 2010s inclusiveness culture. There is some kind of thread in breaking the mould, mainstreaming individuality, collectivising the consequences.

What is happening in the US seems a bit of a sideshow. How much is explained just by the particular kind of urban~rural divide that characterises the states? Is that such a thing anywhere else in the world?

So it seems complicated. But the left vs right lens probably tells us very little of interest.

Social discourse in general has embraced the internet. And that is going to look like something for a start - disruptive, disintermediated, ADHD. Worldwide, bigger things are going on. And in claiming both left and right are embracing identity politics/demolishing democracy, Fukuyama is mashing up the progressive and the conservative, the inclusive and the privileging, the young and the old, the urban and the rural, and all the other natural polarities that are the historical dynamics that need to be more clearly understood.

I agree with your argument for a balance between homogeneity and diversity.

In regards to Fukuyama's argument, my point is that it is not simply a matter of people either seeking forms of self identity or agreeing to a single culture. As you point out, some people can pat their heads and rub their stomachs at the same time.

Therefore, why should it be axiomatic that "marginalized groups" cannot do this balancing act too? Or to put it another way, how is wanting to be recognized an attack upon the "public shared space" by default?
Fukuyama treats the matter as a self evident truth. It is not self evident. He is inviting the reader to overlook the only interesting thing to consider.

It just seems like a complete non-sequitur to me.

Imagine we have a nation state, and for whatever reason, there's some conceptual block where the citizenry have no notion of a unique ethnic or other cultural identity, etc. — Terrapin Station

Perhaps you haven't thought this out.

How could there be a block of citizenry who have no notion of a unique ethnic or other cultural identity?

OK. What's you mother tongue? English? Whatever it is, imagine then that everything officially given to you, taxes, tickets or even the newspapers you can buy, everything is in different language that either you can barely read or don't understand at all. You simply won't get the service in English (or in your mother tongue). So, you think that doesn't affect you and your identity? Do you think then that government is for your when you will not get any service from any official in the language you speak? Now, if your relatives, friends and co-workers would have the same problem with the official language, wouldn't there be something common between you? No? You just happily go to vote without any knowledge what actually you are doing in the voting booth as all the instructions are in a language you cannot understand. Still democracy prevails.

The fact is that identities are not usually a personal choice you make. You don't pick them like your diet of being vegetarian or whatever. At worst it's pushed down your throat by other people in everyday life. If you argue that there are people who don't care about the issue, that's surely true, there are masses of them. They likely live in a country where the official language is the language they speak and everything for them is just given, all the perks from education to social welfare to other public services brought to them by their state. Hence they don't have to care at all about it, they'll just take it for granted and so hence they can question the whole reason for the state to exist.

So, the claim is that just in case the above obtains, that nation state can't practice democracy, they can't all vote on the laws they'll institute, because . . . well, I have no idea why we'd think that, because it seems like a complete non-sequitur. What in the world does the one have to do with the other? — Terrapin Station

Because if people don't relate to the state in any way, why would they vote? It's not their government, it's for somebody else.

Because if people don't relate to the state in any way, why would they vote? It's not their government, it's for somebody else. — ssu

This is the only part that addresses the question I'm asking.

No one is positing people not relating to the state in any way. Unless you think that the only way to relate to a state is via national identity. (In which case you'd need to present an argument for that.)

So, you don't think that people with no concept of national identity (it doesn't matter why exactly they wouldn't have that, it's simply a thought experiment scenario) would be interested in voting on laws about, say, health care, whether marijuana should be legal, whether taxes should be raised, etc.?

No one is positing people not relating to the state in any way. Unless you think that the only way to relate to a state is via national identity. (In which case you'd need to present an argument for that.) — Terrapin Station

Question, Terrapin: what do you think citizenship is?

If you go to a vacation on another continent and fly there, what do you think that passport is about?

So, you don't think that people with no concept of national identity (it doesn't matter why exactly they wouldn't have that, it's simply a thought experiment scenario) would be interested in voting on laws about, say, health care, whether marijuana should be legal, whether taxes should be raised, etc.? — Terrapin Station

Now you are mixing up identity and how the people understanding what their identity is. As I said, many people don't give a damn because it's no problem to them.

And I asked you, who do you think has no notion of a unique ethnic or other cultural identity? How's that possible? The language you speak makes part of that identity. The place you live makes part of that identity.

Question, Terrapin: what do you think citizenship is? — ssu

Re "citizenship," conventional dictionary definitions work well enough. Citizens in the relevant sense, quoting Merriam-Webster, are members of a state or native or naturalized persons who owe allegiance to a government and are entitled to protection from it.

Re "about" that's a can of worms I don't want to sidetrack to re a big semiotics/semantics (philosophy of meaning) discussion. At any rate, re passports, I'd personally say they're focused on controlling movement.

Citizens in the relevant sense are members of a state or native or naturalized persons who owe allegiance to a government and are entitled to protection from it. — Terrapin Station

Isn't that part of their identity then? Even if they don't actually like the country or it's government. (Who wouldn't be critical about his or her government.)

And there you said it yourself. Persons who owe allegiance to a government. Owing allegiance is the "problem" here. And if you don't feel that you get protection from the state, perhaps it discriminates against you, doesn't take into account you or perhaps even persecutes you, why would owe allegiance for that state? Obviously it's not working for you.

And with the passport they actually check your identity.

Isn't that part of their identity then? — ssu

You seem to think that I'm asking questions about identity. I'm not. I'm challenging a purported logical implication.

Therefore, why should it be axiomatic that "marginalized groups" cannot do this balancing act too? Or to put it another way, how is wanting to be recognized an attack upon the "public shared space" by default? — Valentinus

Marginalized groups increasingly demanded not only that laws and institutions treat them as equal to dominant groups but also that the broader society recognize and even celebrate the intrinsic differences that set them apart. — Fukuyama

So if we zero in on this, what would be the democratic ideal then?

I'm not familiar with your definition of "public shared space". But I take it to be an idealised notion of a commons where we all get serviced by a standard civic infrastructure and show some standard balance of tolerance~consideration. So get up close, and does this public shared space rightfully carry the higher demand that we recognise, celebrate and even perhaps love all our differences? Doesn't this in itself undermine the public right to form your own communities or in-groups in the "usual way" - the usual way involving what you as a community stand against, as well as what you stand for?

So there is a problem if we expect the public shared space not to organise itself in the normal social fashion with signifiers to separate the in-group from the out-group. There are always going to be haters and prejudices just because that is how social dynamics generally works. It is nature in action, so to speak.

The job of a public shared space is to then provide a "neutral" arena where the rules of etiquette are minimal enough that there is both a practical respect or tolerance for difference, but also a maximal possibility for free self-expression by communities, whatever size they happen to be.

Militant SJW types are criticised for being intolerant of intolerance. And I think Fukuyama would have a point that identity politics extremists do go too far in that direction. That would be a legitimate complaint. (Just as the dominant mainstream would possibly make the matching mistake of tolerating intolerance that "goes too far" ... too far by some prevailing balancing norm...)

So it is not axiomatic that marginalised groups can't understand what a balanced public shared space would look like. But it is one thing to want equality - or indeed, demand not to be actively oppressed - and another to want to be "recognised and celebrated" for whatever differences you might have to express.

Thus the functional neutrality of the public shared space could be under attack from both directions as Fukuyama argues. What do you think about the marginalised also having some right to be "celebrated". Is that necessary to the underlying social compact?

You seem to think that I'm asking questions about identity. I'm not. I'm challenging a purported logical implication. — Terrapin Station

Is it logical, or even factual, that any nation doesn't have a concern for its identity? Every country wants to tell some story about who it is and what defines it. It is a human necessity.

You are saying that a nation doesn't have to have some foundation myth, some positive sense of self. Yet anthropology tells you want a dumb position that is. Humans just are that way. To suggest that an abstract kind of statehood would be possible is like trying to persuade the world to speak Esperanto. :)

You are saying that a nation doesn't have to have some foundation myth — apokrisis

No. I'm not saying anything even remotely like that.

Fukuyama said:

If not-P, then not-Q.

P was "a national identity" (of a nation state).

Q was "legimitate power and a democracy."

When we plug "a national identity (of a nation state)" into P and " legitimate power and democracy " into Q, I'm disagreeing with Fukuyama's assertion that if not-P, then not-Q is true. That conditional rather seems to be a complete non-sequitur with zero support.

What's not obvious is the notion that you cannot have legimitate power and a democracy in a nation state without a national identity. — Terrapin Station

I'm disagreeing with Fukuyama's assertion that if not-P, then not-Q is true. That conditional rather seems to be a complete non-sequitur with zero support. — Terrapin Station

But the positive claim here would be that you can't have "a nation state" unless there is some identity that indeed characterises that nation as being that nation. The legitimacy resides in that identity and fulfilling those goals. If there is no identity, then there is no nation to speak of.

So regardless of whether the identity is "land of the free", or "land of the white and powerful", it is obvious surely that any claimed legitimacy flows from the national story of what a country is about?