November 4, 2003
THE END (via Rod):
Why History Has No End (Victor Davis Hanson, Autumn 2003, City History)
Writing as the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, Francis Fukuyama famously announced the “End of History.” The world, he argued, was fast approaching the final stage of its political evolution. Western democratic capitalism had proved itself superior to all its historical rivals and now would find acceptance across the globe. Here were the communist regimes dropping into the dustbin of history, Fukuyama noted, while dictatorships and statist economies in Asia and South America were toppling too. A new world consumer class was evolving, leaving behind such retrograde notions as nationhood and national honor. As a result, war would grow rare or even vanish: what was there left to fight about? Gone, or going fast, was the old stuff of history—the mercurial, often larger-than-life men who sorted out on the battlefield the conflicts of traditions and values that once divided nations. Fukuyama acknowledged that the End of History would have a downside. Ennui would set in, as we sophisticated consumers became modern-day lotus-eaters, hooked on channel surfing and material comforts. But after the wars of the twentieth century, the prospect of peaceful, humdrum boredom seemed a pretty good deal.How naive all this sounds today. Islamist hijackers crashing planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and the looming threat of worse terror outrages, have shown that a global embrace of the values of modern democracy is a distant hope, and anything but predetermined. Equally striking, it’s not just the West and the non-democratic world that are not converging; the
West itself is pulling apart. Real differences between America and Europe about what kind of lives citizens can and should live not only persist but are growing wider.A Fukuyaman might counter that September 11 was only a bump on the road to universal democracy, prosperity, and peace. Whether the Middle East’s mullahs and fascists know it or not, this argument would run, the budding spiritual and material desires of their masses for all things Western eventually will make them more like us—though how long this will take is unknown. It’s impossible ultimately to disprove such a long-range contention, of course. But look around. Fukuyama’s global village has seen a lot of old-fashioned ethnic, religious, and political violence since history’s purported end in 1989: Afghanistan, Algeria, Colombia, Iraq, Russia, Rwanda, Sudan, the former Yugoslavia, to name just a handful of flash points. Plato may have been right when he remarked in his Laws that peace, not war, is the exception in human affairs. [...]
It’s understandable, really, that the E.U. has set itself against America. Nothing is more foreign to European statist utopianism than the American emphasis on individual liberty, local self-government, equality under the law, and slow, imperfect reform. America has always been immune to utopian fantasies—indeed, it has always opposed them. The skeptical Founding
Fathers, influenced by the prudence and love of liberty of the British Enlightenment, built the American republic based on the anti-utopian belief that men are fallible and self-interested, love their property, and can best manage their affairs locally. The Founders saw the café theorizing of
Continental elites and French philosophers as a danger to good government, which requires not some grand, all-encompassing blueprint but rather institutional checks and balances and a citizenry of perennially vigilant individual citizens.From America’s very beginnings in the wilderness of the New World, that spirit of rugged individualism and self-reliance has found a home here, and it stands diametrically opposed to European collectivism in all its forms—from the organic, hierarchical community extolled by the old European Right to the socialist commune on the Left to the E.U.’s rationalist
super-state. Of course, our self-reliant ethos sometimes can seem less than
fraternal, as I can attest from personal experience. I farm, among other
things, raisins. Recently, the price of raisins crashed below its level of some 40 years ago. My friends casually suggested that I pack it in, uproot an ancestral vineyard, move on to something else—not, as in Europe, circle the tractor around the capitol, block traffic, or seek government protection and subsidies as a representative of a hallowed way of life under threat from globalization. But who can plausibly deny that America’s astounding dynamism and productivity result from this deep-seated belief that individual men and women are responsible for their own destinies and have no birthright from the state to be affluent?The growing split between the U.S. and Europe that has resulted from these trends is of seismic importance. Though the effort to create a “European Union” may offer superficial relief when one considers Europe’s bloody history, it in fact constitutes a potential long-term threat to the U.S. and
to the world. To the extent that this project succeeds in forging a common European identity, anti-Americanism will likely be its lodestar. But of course, it ultimately will fail, because for most people being a European could never be as meaningful, have such rich cultural and
historical resonance, as being a Frenchman or a German.
No one has greater regard for Mr. Hanson, but this essay makes no sense, neither with respect to his own past writings nor even in the context of this essay itself.
Here's what Mr. Fukuyama wrote in the introduction to his book:
The distant origins of the present volume lie in an article entitled "The End of History?" which I wrote for the journal The National Interest in the summer
of 1989. In it, I argued that a remarkable consensus concerning the legitimacy of liberal democracy as a system of government had emerged throughout the world over the past few years, as it conquered rival ideologies like hereditary monarchy, fascism, and most recently communism.
More than that, however, I argued that liberal democracy may constitute the "end point of mankind's ideological evolution" and the "final form of human government," and as such constituted the "end of history." That is, while earlier forms of government were characterised by grave defects and irrationalities that led to their eventual collapse, liberal democracy was arguably free from such fundamental internal contradictions. This was not to say that today's stable democracies, like the United States, France, or Switzerland, were not without injustice or serious social problems. But these problems were ones of incomplete implementation of the twin principles of liberty and equality on which modern democracy is founded, rather than of flaws in the principles themselves. While some present-day countries might fail to achieve stable liberal democracy, and others might lapse back into other, more primitive forms of rule like theocracy or military dictatorship, the ideal of liberal democracy could not be improved on.
Note the acknowledgment that liberal democracy is not yet universal nor is it necessarily permanent once adopted. Rather, Mr. Fukuyama's assertion is almost inarguable based on history: it is that Man has come up with no other way of structuring a polity that can rival liberal democracy. This, in fact, is the essence of almost everything that Mr. Hanson has ever written.
Even the titles of two of his books give the game away-- /826>The Soul of Battle : From Ancient Times to the Present Day, How Three Great Liberators Vanquished Tyranny and Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power . Or check out this quote from Soul of Battle:
Democracy, and its twin of market capitalism, alone can instantaneously create lethal armies out of civilians, equip them with horrific engines of war, imbue them with a near-messianic zeal within a set time and place to exterminate what they understand as evil, have them follow to their deaths the most ruthless of men, and then melt anonymously back into the culture that produced them. It is democracies, which in the right circumstances, can be imbued with the soul of battle, and thus turn the horror of killing to a higher purpose of saving lives and freeing the enslaved.
In other words, Democratic Capitalism (or liberal democracy) is destined to win any clash of civilizations, provided only that it summons the will. Mr. Hanson would never write that either a totalitarian system like Islam or an authoritarian one like the envisioned EU could be any kind of serious threat to a healthy United States. The idea is ludicrous on its face.
The real problem with Mr. Fukuyama idea (which, as a neocon, he missed), and the all-important qualifier to Mr. Hanson's own faith in liberal democracy's inevitable victory, is that liberal democracy is not self-sustaining and too few comprehend what is required to sustain it: God:
The difficulty is that modern democracy's need for a religious basis is no guarantee that one is readily available. As disturbing as it might be for modern believers to admit, the critics of religion have a legitimate point: Christian faith is derived from a revealed book, the Bible, and from church traditions that are not necessarily liberal or democratic in their teachings. The Christian notion of human dignity, for example, is derived from the biblical idea that human beings are made in the image and likeness of God. But it is not clear if the Bible's idea of the divine image in man--the Imago Dei--entails political notions like democracy and human rights, in fact, many great theologians of the past understood it to be compatible with kingship, hierarchy, or authoritarian institutions. The Christian view of human dignity is also qualified by a severe view of human sinfulness and by other difficult doctrines--such as, divine election, the hierarchical authority of the church, and the priority of duties to God and neighbor over individual rights. These doctrines are not always easy to square with democratic norms of freedom and equality, nor are they easily discarded without removing the core of Christian faith.Thus, we must face the disturbing dilemma that modern liberal democracy needs God, but God is not as liberal or as democratic as we would like Him to be. [Italics in original]
The rolling collapse of Europe illustrates this necessity. It is no coincidence that the abandonment of Christian faith across the continent has produced a corresponding decline, an increased willingness to enter into such an antidemocratic system as the EU, and an inevitable confrontation with an America whose values it no longer shares.
If one understands Mr. Fukuyama top have said that the history of mankind is already over and that we are all living under liberal democracy, obviously that's not true. Read properly though, to say that we already know the societal structures that all will have to arrive at when we reach history's end, at least if we are to be relatively satisfied with that end, then he seems quite right. In the world today (and for quite some time), it is America which adheres most closely to the template and, therefore, America which bestrides the Earth. Unpleasant as the war on terror is, Islamicism and old Europe are mere annoyances--as were Nazism and Communism before them. There is no conceivable prospect of their seriously threatening us so long as we remain faithful to our own Founding. The danger to us comes from within, not from without.
Posted by Orrin Judd at November 4, 2003 9:01 AMNicely put, but mightn't Hanson have had that kind of threat in mind? For much of the North American elites (a big "most" in Canada, but how far are yours away from even a little "most"?), Europe is as magnetic as the local carnival is to most small kids. I doubt more than a very few are even dimly aware of the state of European demographics, economics or social stresses, and they wouldn't pause to think through the consequences if they were. It's all civilized tolerance, rich creativity and progress in their minds, not to mention a great place for holidays.
Listening to the Democratic candidates, I get the impression that all of them are getting most of their ideas from the International Herald Tribune.
Posted by: Peter B at November 4, 2003 10:02 AMOJ,
You are being uncharitable to Hanson. He does not argue that Fukuyama's thesis was that history is already at an end. He says Fukuyama claimed the end of history was fast approaching through the rapid spread of liberal democracy. Hanson is correct. That is precisely what Fukuyama argues. Whatever he says about the potential relapse of liberal democracies in the introduction or any other potential "bumps in the road", an endless cycle of such would not be the end of history, and his book isn't titled that for nothing. Hanson's summation of Fukuyama's main text is correct (either that or my reading and every other summation I've read is incorrect), and his criticism of it is dead on. Fukuyama was naive to think that history is "approaching" an end in any sense.
More importantly, Hanson never has argued, to my knowledge, that liberal democracy is destined to spread across the globe and bring an end to conflict. His argument, as exemplified by your quote from The Soul of Battle, is that liberal democracies that remain true to their principles are destined to vanquish their enemies not that liberal democracy will eventually have no enemies. His thesis is quite compatible with an endless historical cycle of military challenges to liberal democracy, and a continued refusal of our enemies to permanently or even shortly adopt our values once vanquished. He has no illusions that, as an idea, liberal democracy is destined to win out and bring an end to conflict. Fukuyama does.
In short, Fukuyma does not merely argue "that Man has come up with no other way of structuring a polity that can rival liberal democracy." That stops woefully short of capturing the content of his book. He argues that the spread of liberal democracy will eventually bring an end to history as we've known it. That is something that Hanson doesn't argue and never would. He merely argues that liberal democracy is destined to win its conflicts, not that it will eventually bring those conflicts to an historic end.
So your claim that Hanson essentially gets Fukuyama wrong and that his work has in essense agreed with Fukuyama is what doesn't make sense.
Posted by: Eric T at November 4, 2003 10:55 AMEric:
History is over--we won. This is the mopping up operation.
Think of it in these terms: suppose Stephen Hawking were to tomorrow announce a complete theory of everything, that explained every question remaining. But folks found his answers repellant. Science would be over, regardless of the refusal to accept it. History seems already to have reached that point.
Posted by: oj at November 4, 2003 12:03 PMOJ,
So you agree with Fukuyama as I've interpreted him. Fair enough. Leaving aside the fact that this isn't an answer to my essential criticism that you misinterpreted both Fukuyama and Hanson in your post, I'll address your claim: "History is over -- we won."
That's just remarkably naive and arrogant. I say that as a conservative who agrees that we need God, etc. I also say it as a conservative who knows that human nature, ever restless and dissatisfied, ever sinful, will continue on as it has, creating conflict even after this "mopping up operation," necessary as it is, is over - whenever that might be. "We" will always have enemies, and the EU might be the next. Even if they don't win, there will be another.
Moreover, we are indeed our own worst enemy, and the outcome of that internal battle is far from a foregone conclusion, especially when we comfort ourselves with silly ideas that breed complacency like "History is over -- we won."
It is just remarkable to me that someone who grasps the essence of human nature, that we are fallen, can fail to grasp that Plato was right: Peace, not war, is and always will be the exception in human affairs. Liberal democracy as an idea or America as a power is not going to change that. Only the extinction of humanity or the return of Christ can put an end to history. Any other notion of the "end of history" is "ludicrous on its face."
Posted by: Eric T at November 4, 2003 3:55 PMThe last sentence of the Hanson piece, exactly right:
"We stand a better chance of bringing about such a future if we remember from history that man’s nature, for all the centuries’ talk about human perfectibility, is unchanging—and that therefore history never ends."
Posted by: Eric T at November 4, 2003 4:04 PMEric:
I think you're arguing with yourself, because I don't disagree with you. We're talking about human history, not God's. And there is no human social system that can hope to compete with liberal democracy. That doesn't mean we'll keep it or everyone will adopt it. But it does mean that the argument is over. We know what a society needs to do to succeed. Doing so is something altogether different.
Posted by: OJ at November 4, 2003 4:41 PMOJ,
No, I'm not arguing with myself. From the comment you've just made, now I understand the disconnect. Your notion of the end of history, as you've been employing it, is fundamentally different from Fukuyama's or anyone else's I've ever read, and it's fundamentally different from what Hanson is criticizing.
Your notion, as I understand it, is that when the best human social system possible has arisen, history is complete, because no further development is possible. We invented the best system. We won. It won't be defeated as long as we remain true to it.
That is NOT what Fukuyama argues is the end of history. History ends for him when that best social system spreads and men cease to resolve their differences through military conflict. This state ends the historic cycle or war and conquest and so on. A world of liberal democracies will have no appetite for it. This is what most people discuss as the "end of history."
So I'm back to my original point, which you seem intent on ignoring. You are confused about what Fukuyama meant by the end of history. You stated "Mr. Fukuyama's assertion is almost inarguable based on history: it is that Man has come up with no other way of structuring a polity that can rival liberal democracy." That is not Fukuyama's central thesis. It is one of Fukuyama's premises supporting his central thesis that history is approaching an end state when liberal democracy prevails and the historic cycle of conflict ends. That is what Hanson criticizes rightly and roundly.
If you want to insist that the end of history is when the best social system arises and cannot be defeated as long as it remains true to its founding, then I won't disagree. But that is not what Fukuyama meant, and not what Hanson criticizes. My point is that in your post, you interpret Fukuyama incorrectly and therefore Hanson's criticism, too.
-------------------------
Finally, if you don't disagree with me, you don't disagree with Hanson either, because I'm just summarizing his classicist conservative point from a Christian conservative perspective, contra Fukuyama.
Posted by: Eric T at November 4, 2003 5:35 PM"The distant origins of the present volume lie in an article entitled "The End of History?" which I wrote for the journal The National Interest in the summer
of 1989. In it, I argued that a remarkable consensus concerning the legitimacy of liberal democracy as a system of government had emerged throughout the world over the past few years, as it conquered rival ideologies like hereditary monarchy, fascism, and most recently communism.
More than that, however, I argued that liberal democracy may constitute the "end point of mankind's ideological evolution" and the "final form of human government," and as such constituted the "end of history." That is, while earlier forms of government were characterised by grave defects and irrationalities that led to their eventual collapse, liberal democracy was arguably free from such fundamental internal contradictions. This was not to say that today's stable democracies, like the United States, France, or Switzerland, were not without injustice or serious social problems. But these problems were ones of incomplete implementation of the twin principles of liberty and equality on which modern democracy is founded, rather than of flaws in the principles themselves. While some present-day countries might fail to achieve stable liberal democracy, and others might lapse back into other, more primitive forms of rule like theocracy or military dictatorship, the ideal of liberal democracy could not be improved on."
He is demonstrating in the intro from whence the present volume came, not what the present volume concludes.
That conclusion is clear, that history is approaching a state in which liberal democracy prevails and a period of peace and prosperity ensues because liberal democracies resolve their conflicts through means other than war. That is the end of history of which the body of the text speaks.
The ideas that authors have do evolve and change, you know.
I'm done arguing this. We can agree to disagree.
Posted by: Eric T at November 4, 2003 6:36 PMWhen this "period of peace and prosperity ensues because liberal democracies resolve their conflicts through means other than war" ends let me know.
Posted by: oj at November 4, 2003 6:42 PMForgive me, but your sentence doesn't make sense. Why does "ends" belong in the sentence? Perhaps you meant:
When this "period of peace and prosperity ensues because liberal democracies resolve their conflicts through means other than war" [] let me know.
If that's what you meant, I'll pray it does and surely tell everyone. Let's not hold our breath.
Posted by: Eric T at November 4, 2003 7:05 PMWhen is the last time two liberal democracies resorted to war? The American Civil War?
Posted by: oj at November 4, 2003 7:11 PMI tend to agree with Fukuyama on this, but he was making a fairly obscure Hegelian argument that there is now no antithesis to the liberal democratic thesis, and thus no new synthesis is to be expected. Unless we believe that we are going to see some new combination of Islamofascism and liberal democracy, Fukyama was right.
Posted by: David Cohen at November 4, 2003 7:29 PMLook, that wasn't my point.
I meant when this age of which I believe Fukuyama speaks, in which liberal democracies dominate and peace reigns, ensues. Forgive me if I wasn't clear. I'm not going to hold my breath that such an age will come.
I thought you might be trying to end on a soft note of fellowship, so I followed suit.
Whatever you meant, your sentence framing my text still doesn't make sense with two verbs - ensues and ends.
So I suppose, based on what you just asked, you really meant, leaving out "ensues":
When this "period [in which] liberal democracies resolve their conflicts through means other than war" ends let me know.
Well, sarcasm will alway win you respect and admiration.
God bless.
Posted by: Eric T at November 4, 2003 7:33 PMeric:
This is that age. History is over. All that's left is mop up.
Posted by: oj at November 4, 2003 7:41 PMIt all sounds very nice in theory. But the whole project, for all its attractiveness, smacks of utopia (leading one to perhaps ask, is my utopia also your utopia?).
Thus isn't the problem, one of vigilance? That is, once "success" has been achieved (i.e., once history has ended), how does society, local or (let's assume) global (though global is a hefty assumption, or rather the hefty assumption)---or the individual, for that matter---sustain it? How does it avoid lapsing into desuetude, degeneracy, disinterest, decay? What new challenges prompt it to continue to "grow"? What dangers stimulate its ingenuity? And can one assume that the new generation, forged under dissimilar circumstances, feels exactly as its forerunners?
And should degeneracy set in, what prevents the next best thing from plucking the ripe fruit?
From this point of view, success, perhaps especially liberal success, contains the seeds of its own dissolution.
And as such, history can be expected to keep on rolling on....
(Though I believe that conservatives here have an advantage. It's "merely" a "paradise lost" issue, actually---or the phoenix myth, if you will---and I don't see any way to escape from it really, except to keep recreating oneself and one's society within the broad, yet proscribed, limits of the Constitution along with a "proper" appreciation of religion, and the maintenance of a strong and morally backed---as much as possible that is, armed forces. The American dream?)
While it is true that there may be some countries, peoples, or cultures that DON'T adopt some form of liberal democracy and capitalism, (whether it be American-style, socialism, direct democracy, republics, or something else), they will increasingly fail to prosper, and fall further behind the rest of the world.
Stone-age tribes still exist in South America and New Guinea, but few would maintain that they add anything of value to humanity. In a sense, they are outside of history.
So, too, will be those cultures that don't grab the brass ring.
Barry:
Yes, that's precisely the point. Liberal democracy does degenerate. But whichever culture has most recently adopted it will be the most powerful and it will remain the dominant arrangement. That's why you'd expect a Westernized Islam to be dominant next century and Europe to be a graveyard.
Posted by: OJ at November 5, 2003 8:04 AMAlas, the "brass ring," for those who are less than impressed with either liberal democracy or "win-win" situations, generally---for whom liberal democracy is just too much of a nuisance, or too much effort, or anathema on principle---increasingly seems to be nuclear weapons.
So that unfortunately, it seems that the unimagineable is increasingly likely.
Of course, by "catapulting" themselves into (post?) modernity, such governments/societies continue to deceive themselves (cf. "The Closed Circle").
Now one might like to think that they are merely catapulting themselves into oblivion; but that does not make them any less lethal.
Posted by: Barry Meislin at November 5, 2003 8:44 AMNuclear weapons have only ever been used by one nation, a democracy, against a totalitarian regime.
Posted by: OJ at November 5, 2003 8:51 AMSo far.
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at November 5, 2003 10:01 PMBarry:
Nuclear weapons are troubling, but, they're really only very powerful alternatives to conventional weapons, especially without ICBMs. They will only be used in situations where conventional weapons might have been used.
In fact, the US can currently thoroughly destroy any of the nuclear or near-nuclear nations, using conventional means, with the exception of India, China, and Russia.
Take North Korea, for instance. They may well have three or seven nuclear weapons, but how would they use them against the US ? They could float or fly them over, and destroy our two largest cities, plus D.C., or seven of our third-tier cities... They have primitive missile technology, so if they just wanted to explode their nukes SOMEWHERE in Japan, Hawai'i, or California, they could do that...
In any of those cases, they would fail to destroy the US, and would be destroyed in the process.
To be more than a regional power, a country must have many, many nuclear weapons, and some accurate, long-range missiles. China barely qualifies.
I'd be more frightened of bio-weapons, which are a bit further out of second and third world countries' reach.
You're more ambitious than I am, by far.
However, there's not a lot they could do about it, in the short term.
In the long term, however...