The new book from author Francis Fukuyama. (File)

In the aftermath of shootings at Columbine and other tragic events, many Americans have become concerned about a perceived moral erosion in U.S. society, growing increasingly cynical about the country's future.

But in his new book, The Great Disruption: Human Nature and the Reconstitution of Social Order (released in June 1999), author Francis Fukuyama argues that society is on the verge of a new era – one in which ordinary Americans will strive to live morally and insist their leaders and institutions do the same.

Fukuyama was online Monday, June 28, 1999 to discuss his new book, his thoughts on history, and the state of social order in America as the country approaches the end of the millenium.

Fukuyama is no stranger to controversial topics. His 1992 book, The End of History and the Last Man, which argued that liberal democracy was the end point in the evolution of nations, stirred much debate in Washington and around the world.

Fukuyama is currently a professor of public policy at George Mason University and a consultant to the Rand Corporation. He is also the author of Trust, published in 1995.

A transcript of the discussion follows below:

Washingtonpost.com: Welcome to our today's discussion with author Francis Fukuyama. We already have many questions, so let's get started.

Dr. Fukuyama, first tell us a little bit about your new book. What does the title, The Great Disruption refer to? And what period are we talking about?

Francis Fukuyama: The Great Disruption refers to the dramatic increase in social disorder that occurred all across the Western developed world beginning in the mid-1960s. In my book, I measure this disruption through increasing levels of crime, family breakdown, and decreasing trust of citizens for institutions and for each other. There is some evidence that the Great Disruption is now coming to an end: in the U.S. and other countries that experienced it, crime rates are down substantially in the 1990s, family disruption has tapered off, welfare case loads and teenage pregnancy have all dropped. My view is that people naturally create social order for themselves, and that therefore we can expect this trend to continue.

Paris FRANCE: Hi Mr.Fukuyama

In this age of globalization, do you think liberal democracies can find the strength within themselves to withstand the apparently total dominance of market values over socially-conscious values? I mean, I'm all for capitalism but I also personally feel this growing unbalance between our power as citizens and the power of world markets is seriously affecting our democratic future. Thank you.

Francis Fukuyama: I don't believe that there is as much of a conflict between market and social values as you suggest. Most Europeans understand social values to be the welfare state, which for many reasons is now in trouble; for me the more important pole of social solidarity has to do with civil society and that is something that market societies support.

Garland, TX: Do you think that Liberal Democracy is the apex of the world's governments? Will the nations of the world eventually reach a "political zero" on conflict (i.e. war) in this state and continue on as individual entities, or will a world government emerge from this state in which the traditional nation-state is dissolved into a collective species-state?

Francis Fukuyama: I don't expect that there will be world government anytime soon. What we will see is more countries becoming democratic, or accepting democratic values in some form. This has already created a democratic "zone of peace" in the world in which the old rules of power politics don't apply as they once did.

Washington, D.C. : I'm curious as to how much you believe the culture has been affected by the advent of television and movies? I haven't read your book but read a review. Doesn't your so-called Great Disruption take place when television started becoming king in the 1950s and 1960s? And aren't people continually told how they should feel about something by Hollywood, which has always had a greater agenda toward fewer personal controls and violence?

Francis Fukuyama: I think that TV, movies, and other forms of modern media have accelerated the changes in values that I discuss in The Great Disruption, but are not ultimately responsible for them. TV in particular has had an atomizing effect: we can all retreat to our gated communities and sit on the couch in front of the tube, without the need for social interaction with anyone. But these values would have changed in any event, due to other shifts that were occurring in the nature of work, family, sex, technology, and the like.

Omaha, NE: I disagree with the premise of the breakdown of moral values in the sixties.

I think what really happened was a confrontation on what was passed off as moralistic; namely the lust for money, capitalistic takeover of a democratic republic, a multi-national, corporate old world order, rigid sexual stereotyping that had nothing to do with morals and everything to do with the hoarding of power. Care to comment?

Susan Baker

Francis Fukuyama: There have clearly been gains since the 1960s, in terms of greater equality for minorities, women, and other people marginalized by society. But one cost of that greater inclusiveness has been a deterioration of commonly shared values. No one, for example, would regard the increase in crime that occurred over this period as a positive development. I'm also not aware that the nature of capitalism changed so dramatically over this period--capitalism has been producing social disruptions for several centuries now.

Winchester,VA: What impact has the birth control pill had on American society?

Francis Fukuyama: As I argue in the book, the Pill had a much greater impact that people give it credit for. Rather than giving women greater control over their reproductive lives, the Pill tended to liberate men from the social constraints that bound them to the children they created. This unanticipated consequence explains why the introduction of the Pill in the 1960s was followed by an explosion of illegitimacy, divorce, single parent families, etc.

Columbia, MD: In your article on the "End of History," you treated Islam as a reactionary ideology opposed to liberal democracy. Given the role that Islam has played in revitalizing some marginalized areas of urban America, and its status as the fastest growing religion in America, what role do you see it playing in social life? Do you foresee it playing a similar role as the church did to provide a moral compass and social order, especially in African American communities?

Francis Fukuyama: Yes, absolutely. There is no reason why Islam should play less of a role in moral reconstruction than either Christianity or Judaism in American social history. There can be liberal forms of Islam perfectly compatible with modern liberal democracy.

Washingtonpost.com: You've studied the Classics and a great deal of political philosophy. Do you have any favorite philosophers--those individuals you find yourself reading over and over?

Francis Fukuyama: Clearly, The End of History was strongly influenced by Hegel and his great French interpreter, Alexandre Kojeve, but he's not someone you read lightly for pleasure. I believe that the philosopher who has the most to say about our present situation in modern democracies is the great French interpreter of the United States, Alexis de Tocqueville.

Washington, DC: In your book, you discuss constituting a new social order; that human nature will reconstitute itself to adapt to the changes we have undergone since the 1960s. Isn't this directly opposed to the thesis that liberal democracy is the fulfillment of human nature and thus the end of history?

Francis Fukuyama: If you go back to the End of History and the Last Man, you will see that I argued in that book that modern liberal democracies have a weakness insofar as they cannot take their cultural preconditions for granted. The Great Disruption was in a sense an effort to think through where cultural values come from in modern, post-industrial societies. My conclusion is that these cultural values in a sense have innate sources in all human beings, but that they constantly are being disrupted by the progress of technology and therefore are constantly in need to reconstruction. Hence our cultural history tends to by cyclical, while our political history moves in a secular (though not necessarily linear) direction.

Arlington, VA: From the brief introduction provided, it seems you are arguing for a new age of tranquility for the US based on events of the past 30 years. Do you address the potentially disruptive factor of immigration in your work? How many "Americans" in 2020 will have experienced all the events which you see as formative?

Paul Heineman

Francis Fukuyama: I believe that the important issue from the standpoint of American culture is not immigration per se so much as assimilation. The US in the past has taken in huge numbers of immigrants and turned them into Americans within a generation. The problem today is that American elites no longer believe in assimilation, and have promoted policies like multiculturalism and bilingualism which in the end only slow down the assimilation process. (John Miller's book The Unmaking of Americans is very good on this subject.) If we continue down this road, I do think we will have a significant cultural problem in the future.

Eskisehir Turkey: Whereas US society is known to be much more moralistic about the way their politicians are compared to Mediterranean societies -Remember Papendrau-, in the aftermath of the Pres. Clinton's survival, our impression was these moral imperfectnesses will not be counted as sternly as before. Why would this case not be a landmark towards a less moralistic society in your hypotheses?

Francis Fukuyama: Well, President Clinton was after all impeached, even if acquitted. I don't think Americans are going to lose their moralism after the Lewinsky scandal. The focus merely shifts--to human rights, to non-proliferation, to global warming, etc.

Washingtonpost.com: We have a half hour remaining in our discussion with author Francis Fukuyama. Continue to submit questions using the link below.

Ashland, Oregon: You said: "I believe that the philosopher who has the most to say about our present situation in modern democracies is the great French interpreter of the United States, Alexis de Tocqueville." Could you please expand on this? And how would you describe America's present situation in modern democracies?

Francis Fukuyama: Tocqueville is important because was the philosopher of civil society, who recognized that voluntary associations were critical to the proper functioning of a modern democracy. In The Great Disruption and in Trust, I use the concept "social capital," which refers to people's ability to work with one another in groups based on shared norms and values. Tocqueville didn't use the term social capital, but he was the first great theorist of democracy to understand how important it was. Without social capital, the state ends up intervening in everything to create social order and organization--much as was and is the case in Tocqueville's own country, France.

Washington, DC: Do you think the reconstitution of social order occurs because of, despite, or independent of public policy?

Francis Fukuyama: No, public policy is very important (I am, after all, a professor of public policy). For example, crime rates have fallen in the US recently in part because the US criminal justice system has built more prisons, gone in for innovations like community policing, and the like. The government can help correct moral values as when it abolished slavery in 1863 or passed the civil rights legislation of the 1960s banning legal segregation. But on another level, it cannot affect the values that shape human relations in the broader society except at the margin. This is why I argue in The Great Disruption that much of our future moral evolution will take place spontaneously.

Washingtonpost.com: If man inherently desires recognition for his actions--as you argued in "The End of History"--won't he often act in ways that will be detrimental to the maintenance of social order? In other words, can you have a society of people who struggle at all costs to be recognized and, at the same time, have a society where there is a resurgence of an ethic of collective responsibility?

Francis Fukuyama: The desire for recognition is the wellspring for just about all forms of human action, including a lot of what passes for economic motivation (we want a higher salary not so we can buy more things but because of the status it brings us). The issue is to keep this struggle for recognition within bounds, so that it doesn't spill out into, for example, gang warfare where a teenager kills another for "dissing" him, but rather into the marketplace where competition at least produces something of social value. The fact that modern commercial societies struggle over market share rather than over territory is in fact one of their great achievements.

Six Mile Run, PA : With the overt effort to eliminate God and religion from all areas of public society and particularly, in the schools and government, exactly what basis do you see being used for the standard to determine what is and what is not "moral"? In the absence of such a standard is it not a state of "every man doing what is right in his own eyes," Ergo an amoral society?

Francis Fukuyama: As I argue in the book, I believe that religion is extremely helpful to moral reconstruction, but that it is not the sine qua non of moral and social order. Part II on the origins of moral values argues that human beings are by nature wired to produce moral rules for themselves, and will do so in the absence of either a prophet or lawgiver. Religion becomes critical in expanding what I call the "radius of trust" beyond family and kin, to a broader circle of humanity. But that's a long argument that I can't fully make here.

Ashland, Oregon: How would you describe the mood in America as we come to the end of what has been called "the American century?" Surveys seem to show a general satisfaction with peoples' personal and community lives and a general comfortableness with the notion of American intervention abroad in certain circumstances. Is this feeling of general ease justified, or is it born of ignorance?

Francis Fukuyama: I think that we are living through a remarkable period in American economic and social history, where very many things are going right simultaneously. Where I would worry is not in the loss of everyday virtues like civility, love of family, honesty, and the like (though these were compromised by the Great Disruption), bur rather in higher virtues like patriotism and self-sacrifice. Dean Acheson, though a product of Groton and Yale, immediately volunteered for service in World War I. How many hedge fund managers and bond traders today would do that, or see their children do that?

Washington, D.C.: Do you believe the elimination of the military draft has contributed to the decline in commonly-held values. It seems to me that, in the military, most males learned that success -and possibly survival- depended on a dedication to something bigger than themselves. They then subsequently brought that type of attitude back to their communities, and infused it there.

Francis Fukuyama: Yes, I think that universal military service was one of those socializing institutions that once gave American males a common set of experiences, and that its elimination is one of the contributing causes of our current atomization. But there are a lot of other contributing factors as well, such as our great mobility, our ability to communicate across space and time, and the sheer diversity of the society that makes it harder and harder to create common values and experiences.

Washington, D.C.: What makes you believe that Americans will insist on social order, especially at a time when, as you noted in your book, the culture keeps telling them to live their life with "no limits"?

Francis Fukuyama: Ultimately, the argument is that human beings by nature like limits, order, and connection to other people in communities. There is also an age-specificity to this: the "no limits" message is particularly appealing to young people who have their lives ahead of them and don't want to be reminded of any constraints to their futures. Now that the baby boom generation is aging and having to deal with children, careers, and the like, the "no limits" message may not seem so attractive.

New York, NY: Dr. Fukuyama,

Having read your first book but not your most recent, I have an observation and a question:

To me, it seems that Americans are, well, bored. They've made a bizillion dollars in the market and they don't know what to do. The only thing people get excited about is when someone or something pushes the envelope to that next level--and pushing the envelope usually involves something stupid, gross, or pointless. Is this what our existence has come to? Is this what man does at your "End of History?"

Francis Fukuyama: There is something to the idea that people are bored. It is very hard to get people's attention by being simply honest, reliable, attentive to other people, and the like. Modern art for the past couple of generations has had to progress from the pointless but inoffensive Dadaism of the 1920s to the oftentimes truly offensive performance art of the 1990s. But there can also be a reaction against this as well--witness the return to tonalism in contemporary classical music.

Virginia Beach, VA: Your publications seem to follow a pattern in regard to their level of analysis. First, the state level -The End of History-, then the societal level -Trust-, and now analysis dealing with human nature, or the individual level -The Great Disruption-. What is next for Francis Fukuyama? Perhaps a jump into structural theory? As a fan of yours I would enjoy such a volume.

Francis Fukuyama: I wish I knew. I am usually so exhausted after getting a book out that it takes a year or so to come up for air again.

Washington DC: What are your thoughts on the political, cultural, and economic influence of China and other powerful non-Western countries, esp. the Islamic countries, in the next century? These countries seem to stand outside the West's "end of history" and have remained in their own cultural and moral diaspora. Can we thus really say that modern liberal democracies are the culmination of history's long progression?

Francis Fukuyama: I think that the West has some cultural lessons to learn from non-Western cultures. The "Asian values" debate initiated by Lee Kwan Yew of Singapore in the early 1990s has now been dismissed by many Americans in light of the Asian economic crisis, but in fact many Asians were making some important criticisms of American society. When Michael Fay was sentenced to a caning by the Singaporeans for spray-painting cars, a majority of people in his home town in Ohio supported the Singaporean government, suggesting that many Americans had some doubts about their own culture as well.

Francis Fukuyama: I'm sorry that I didn't get to answer all of your questions--there were many more interesting ones than I had time for. If anyone is interested in pursuing this further, you can check my Web site www.francisfukuyama.com or email me at ffukuyam@gmu.edu

Washingtonpost.com: Well, that's all the time we have. Many thanks to all who participated and thanks to Francis Fukuyama, who joined us from his office at George Mason University.