The End of History?

A series on political philosophy with an eye toward democratic liberalism

Eugène Delacroix: Liberty Leading the People, 1830

The painting above depicts the July Revolution of 1830. Lady Liberty, holding the flag of the French Revolution, leads a mixture of people, including educated bourgeois, students, workers, and a young boy. They advance through a combination of will and force, symbolized by her assertion of the French flag and rifle at hand, toward liberation.

What is the end of history?

Last year I finally got around to reading Francis Fukuyama’s End of History. And before I get into the details, let me just say that I would recommend it to anyone. It’s well written and packed with interesting commentary, something that cannot be said about many books about political philosophy. Plus, its a fascinating insight into the early 1990s.

The basic thesis of the book is that human societies have progressed through many periods of social organization, but that, as we have entered the 21st century, the world as a whole is converging on liberal democracy as its preferred form of government.

“The end-point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.”

In making this claim, Fukuyama identifies himself as a “historicist,” that is, someone who views social and cultural phenomena as the result of a process with directionality. This kind of thinking is fairly common to modernity. For example, when someone makes a political argument by saying “get on the right side of history,” they are making an argument from historicism. In Fukuyama’s case, the “right side of history” is the inevitable spread of democratic liberalism.

The End of History was published in 1992, right at the end of the cold war. The Soviet bloc had disintegrated and the West had won. Liberal democracy had defeated communism. America had assumed the role of the unipolar global hegemon. It was easy to believe that every country on earth would soon be swept up by liberal democracy.

Now, it’s been 30 years since EOH was published and “obviously history isn’t over, dude.” We have factions around the world resisting liberal democracy including the Taliban, North Korea, Iran, Russia, etc.

Here’s another fun historicist quip. “Everything works out in the end. And if it hasn’t worked out yet, it isn’t the end yet.” After all, if you believe that “the universe bends toward justice,” then the only way to understand a resurgent Russia is to believe that the invasion of Ukraine is a mere blip in the signal, an eddy in the current, and that “the end has obviously not arrived yet.” With this mindset, you might believe that, in the end, Russia, China, and all the other countries on autocracy bingo will inevitably turn to liberal democracy.

But these countries aren’t only moving away from “the end,” they are explicitly avoiding it. Moreover, liberal democracies such as America are increasingly adopting illiberal elements. People in these countries seem to not just accept but celebrate the incursion of illiberalism. What are we to make of all this?

What is liberalism?

I grew up in America; I’m a product of “the west” and the American “liberal” system. I find myself “thrown” into a time and place where there is emphasis placed on civil, political, and religious freedoms, individualism, strong property rights, and a belief in progress. It is also a time of democracy, emphasis on “rights”, global trade, cultural leveling, social mixing, existentialism, nihilism, the decline of religion, freedom of speech, neoliberalism, free markets, inequalities, capitalism, declining fertility rates, and an expanding federal government. America is the most “free” and “wealthy” society humans have ever created. But, people are also unhappy, imbalanced, and increasingly willing to trade freedom for security.

Obviously, not all of these items are liberal doctrine. Some may be side effects. Some may be unrelated. The list has some good things and some bad things in it. Which elements are “liberalism?”

I often find myself defending liberalism. And to be honest, I’m not always sure what I am defending. Which values are liberal and which ones are ideology? Which outcomes are directly caused by liberalism and which are unrelated? Are we talking about “classical liberalism” as the 18th century intellectuals understood it, the American liberalism as charted by the Founding Fathers, or the neoliberalism that became popular after WWII?

Here are some things liberalism could be

John Locke (1689) defined liberalism as a natural right to life, liberty, and property. The simplest definition of classical liberalism that I have seen is simply:

1. Civil rights (property and self)

2. Religious rights (worship)

3. Political rights (speech)

But then we have Francis Fukuyama quoting John Gray at the start of Liberalism and its Discontents (2021), which states that the unifying features of liberalism are that it is:

1. Individual: It asserts the moral primacy of the person against claims of social collectivity

2. Egalitarian: It asserts that all men are of equal moral status

3. Universalist: It affirms the moral unity of the human species and affords a secondary importance to the specific historic associations and cultural forms of its peoples

4. Meliorist: It is based in a belief that the world can be made better by human effort.

These lists have a lot of difference between them. And so it’s not surprising that we are stuck with a whole bunch of liberal adjacent terms that might apply in one case or another:

• Classical liberalism: the set of ideas that emerged in the 1600s with Hobbes and Locke, limited powers of government, and civil “liberties” granted to individuals.

• Neoliberalism: a newer form of liberalism that advocates for limited government oversight, free-market economy, and liberal rights to protect freedoms and promote economic prosperity.

• American liberal: those on the left of center in American politics.

• European liberal: those right of center who are skeptical of socialism

• Libertarian: those who are skeptical of any government activity

• Progressive: those who believe in the inevitable march forward of human progress and who believe that that march forward is good

• Socialist: those who want to use the government to advance social policies

• Leftism: ideology that seeks equality of outcome or “equity” through technological, legal, or social interventions.

Many people today seem to muddle all of these definitions together and then, in their assessment of whether they like liberalism or not, provide a cherry-picked Manichean assessment that traces liberalism to either all of our society’s success or all of its failures.

Part of the reason that this approach is so common is that little of the commentary on liberalism, good or bad, makes any reference to its foundations. Take America. Modern fans and critics of America’s liberalism seem to have rarely read what the founding fathers wrote (e.g. the constitution), the people who influenced them (European enlightenment thinkers), their own exposes on what they thought they were up to (Federalist papers), or seemingly any of the history of what else was going on at the time.¹

And forget the mainstream, I know people clerking on the supreme court who haven’t read the Federalist papers.

A series on liberalism and political philosophy

Ok ok. I’m still unsure whether anyone really knows what liberalism is, but I am going to write a series of articles here to try to at least get a better idea. Here are some questions I plan to answer:

• What are we talking about when we talk about liberalism?

• What is the deal with historicism and natural right?

• What social/moral foundation is required for liberalism to work?

• Is liberalism is worth defending?

• Is globalism is linked to meliorism?

• Is liberalism is linked to poor moral health?

• Is democratic liberalism the end of history?

• Did the Founding Fathers actually favor democracy? (We know the ancients didn’t)

• Was religion originally seen as a necessary substrate on which liberalism should be bound?

• Will liberalism ultimately Darwin Award itself?

• Etc.

This list is not exhaustive and I expect plenty of turns along the way.²

1. This is one of those areas where, if you go looking, you can find some appalling survey-based-statistics that make you wonder whether the respondents were messing with the survey takers. For example, apparently “fewer than half of Americans can name the three branches of government.”

2. Disclaimer. If it isn’t clear, I’m not a constitutional scholar or a legislator or political theorist. Please feel free to read my about page for disclaimers about my lack of professional training in these areas.

That said, here’s some what I’ve read to prepare: Locke’s 2nd treatise, excerpts of Hobbes, my notes on Rousseau, a dive into Machiavelli, Plato’s Republic, Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and Aristotle’s politics, a couple books by Fukuyama including The End of History, Strauss’ What is Political Philosophy, Natural Right and History, and a few of his essays, Why Liberalism Failed by Deneen, Regime Change by Deneen, a re-read of the Federalist Papers, the US constitution, and the Declaration of Independence, Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, Dugan’s 4^th political theory, a bunch of other Substacks that are probably on the banned reading list, The Political Theory of the American Founding by Thomas West, plus all the classic dystopian fiction like 1984, Fahrenheit 451, Brave New World, Island, We, and probably a few others. Houellebecq. Years and years of The Economist.

I’ve also been attending seminars around DC. I recently watched two old guys blabber on in a “debate” about whether Ronald Regan was really a conservative. I went to the book launch of Regime Change. I’ve been to talks by senators and henchmen. Events at CSIS and the Capitol. It’s a mix of inputs. Does this make me qualified to ask what liberalism is? Ehhhhh.