Is This the End of History?

Naturally, we believe that virtue will out. In the great struggle between virtue and vice, we are destined to win-- because we represent virtue. In the world of politics virtue is code for liberal values. Since we value freedom and justice we are destined to win out over authoritarian dictatorships, the ones that do not value freedom and justice.

Remember the old saw about the arc of history? 

For many people, this is an article of faith. We believe it because we believe it. And we fly off into the highest dudgeon when anyone challenges the consensus view that liberal ideals will prevail. 

If we extend the reasoning, we can end up thinking that we need not fight foreign wars or even improve industrial production. All we need to do is extend the reign of liberty and justice.

This brings back shades of Francis Fukuyama. By his recycled Hegelianism, history is a narrative that will end with the reign of liberal democracy. 

Then, Heavenly City will descend on our miserable planet. Fukuyama pretended that the end of history would arrive when everyone agreed that liberal democracy is the most effective and efficient form of governance. When the Berlin Wall fell Fukuyama declared, somewhat prematurely, that history had ended.

Anyone who has an ounce of perspicuity knows that the belief in liberal democracy is anything but universal today. 

Nonetheless, the armies of liberal democracy march on. Not on the battlefield or in the factory. They have taken over the American academy where they happily impose their notions of equity and diversity on their student bodies. Keep in mind, they are doing so in the name of an ideal, and also of their vision of the Heavenly City. 

Many thinkers have disputed the Fukuyama prophecy. And yet, it persists. Gerard Baker writes in the Wall Street Journal that those who believe it can easily become complacent. They forget the habits that have produced the greatness of Western civilization and beliee it to be sufficient to force everyone to believe in their gauzy ideals.

Baker explained:

Central to the West’s idea of its modern historic supremacy has been the comforting myth that we have prevailed because of the superiority of our ideas.

Might in the end can’t overcome right, we think. The brute force of tyranny and totalitarian terror can succeed for a while—even a long while—but eventually, the human yearning for freedom and justice has an inescapable logic. It is not so much that right will always overcome might, as that being “right” confers on us a power that is mightier than any dictator could ever muster.

So, too many people believe that we will ultimately win out because we have better ideas. Were you to ask what it means to have better ideas, they will whine about the need to impose an orthodoxy of correct belief. 

And yet, when we extol the virtue of freedom are we talking about free markets or a free-for-all? Are we free to play by the rules or free to break the rules? They are not the same thing.

Baker sees it in terms of an Enlightenment theory of history:

This is a geopolitical version of Whiggish history, the idea that the world is evolving on some great hidden trajectory toward liberty, democracy and enlightenment.

And yet, he adds, what if there is more to the story? Or better, what if it is really not a story:

…that the world as it exists is the product of the military and strategic victory of the U.S. and its allies in World War II and the Cold War. We won. So in our telling of the story we insist that there was something inevitable about the ultimate righteous triumph of freedom. Our confidence is so complete we even declare that history is over.

Surely, Baker is correct to see that winning a war is far more important than believing in the correct ideas. One notes that if the Heavenly City will not descend on the earth until everyone believes in the right ideals, that this will lead inexorably to policing thought, even to canceling those who do not hold the correct opinions.

Feeding people and winning wars, providing for life’s comforts and emerging victorious on the battlefield-- these have made America great. Grand ideals, not so much.

But the power of our example would never have been enough without the example of our power. In the absence of sustained military commitments, strategic engagement and repeated sacrifice, there was nothing guaranteed about the victory of our ideas.

Now, we are being called upon to compete, in the marketplace and even on the battlefield. We are not going to prevail by trotting out a bunch of shopworn Enlightenment ideals.

We need to remember that truth as we survey the world today. Not since the worst days of the Cold War, perhaps not since the 1930s, have we faced such a combination of threats to our freedom and prosperity, to our very existence. A touching faith in the supposed universality of our ideals and the inevitable rightness of our cause won’t save us.

Moreover, Fukuyama notwithstanding, the world does not see Western civilization thriving. It sees the West in decline, weak and self-involved, filled with self-doubt, divided and distrustful. It is not a pretty picture. We are living on our past glory, not on our present achievements. That is to say, we earned a rather generous credit line and we are spending it down. This is not the same as producing wealth.

Baker concludes:

They don’t see the triumph of the West and its values. They see a weakened and declining West, an America at odds with itself over its identity and its leadership in the world, a nation enfeebled by deepening self-doubt, widening division, widespread mistrust, timid leadership, institutional paralysis and soaring debt. They see, as we have seen this last week, a culture—in the media, educational institutions, public discourse—that increasingly does their work for them, willfully propagating falsehoods that advance their cause, always eager to attribute evil to us and not to our enemies.

So, we should not fall into complacency and should not imagine that if only we can persuade enough people to join the Church of the Liberal Pieties we will naturally prevail.

It isn’t our values and our ideas that may ensure we prevail in this struggle, but the terrifying recognition of how fragile those values and ideas are.

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