Looking Toward the Real End of History
In his 1992 book The End of History and the Last Man, political scientist Francis Fukuyama argued that we have reached “the end-point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.” It’s a very optimistic view, which could remind one of the naïve claim that WWI would be the “war to end all wars.” Also optimistic, within the context of their “perspective,” are those rather odd people we call leftists with their belief that they’re “on the right side of history.”
Radio giant and conservative icon Rush Limbaugh would once express his optimism, too, repeatedly uttering in the 1990s a line that became a chapter in his 1993 book, The Way Things Ought to Be. To wit: “We are Winning.” A July caller to his show pointed out that he hadn’t “heard that in a long time.” “I’m just curious,” he continued, “but — are we still winning? I’m kind of worried.” He has a lot of company.
Whether Fukuyama’s theory is right or risible and Limbaugh prescient or passé, people do tend to be children of their age and not of the ageless. The epitome of this is the leftists, who currently are happy — insofar as the miserable can be so — for the same reason Limbaugh’s caller was worried. But they’re not, as they suppose, on the right side of history but only of current events, which themselves currently are on the wrong side of history.
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