End of History

A PEOPLE WHO THINK THEMSELF A NATION ARE ONE:

Time to recognize the Houthis as Yemen’s real government: UN General Assembly should seek a diplomatic solution in Yemen that recognizes Ansar Allah as the nation’s legitimate ruler (Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J S Davies, September 23, 2026, Asia Times)

Since 2015, international recognition of Saudi-backed governments-in-exile has served to justify a decade of war and economic strangulation against 80% of Yemenis who live in the area governed by Ansar Allah, including Sana’a, the capital.

Between 2015 and 2022, with full US support, Saudi Arabia and its allies dropped over 69,000 bombs and missiles on Yemen, including thousands on civilian targets, killing at least 8,983 civilians, according to Iona Craig’s Yemen Data Project. By the end of 2021, the UN estimated that the war, blockade, and resulting humanitarian crisis had caused 377,000 deaths.

So how did Yemen end up in such a frightful predicament? How can the United States, other countries, and even the UN continue to recognize exile governments that have supported bombarding and starving their own people for over a decade?

The roots lie in Yemen’s failed political transition after the Arab Spring. In 2011, a mostly peaceful uprising brought down Yemen’s corrupt, repressive, US-backed president, Ali Abdullah Saleh.

His vice president, Hadi, was appointed to a two-year term as interim president in 2012. Ansar Allah, based in Saada in north Yemen, played a leading role in the uprising against Saleh and participated in the National Dialogue that was supposed to guide the transition.

But Hadi failed to organize the planned election by February 2014. His term was extended for another year, but the transition again stalled. That’s when Ansar Allah moved south from its base in Saada, combining popular protests over fuel prices and the stalled political transition with an armed advance toward Sana’a.

Its fighters entered the capital in September 2014, defeating government forces. Ansar Allah was subsequently granted seats in a UN-approved interim government under President Hadi.

But the power-sharing arrangement quickly broke down. Tensions between Ansar Allah and Hadi’s government escalated over the drafting of a new constitution and the division of political power. In January 2015, Ansar Allah seized the presidential palace, and Hadi resigned and retired to his home in Aden. Ansar Allah formed a ruling council to fill the vacuum.

However, a month later, with support from Saudi Arabia, Hadi rescinded his resignation and tried to reclaim the presidency. A few days later, he fled from Aden to Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, and, in March, 2015, the Saudis attacked Yemen, with US support.

BOREDOM IS THE DANGER OF AFFLUENCE:

He Warned That the End of History Could Be Rough. Maybe Now People Will Listen.:
Francis Fukuyama’s famous take on the post-Cold War world was widely misunderstood. In a new memoir, he tries to set the record straight. (Jennifer Szalai, Aug. 31, 2026, NY Times)

In the last five chapters of his book, which hardly anyone seemed to read or remember, Fukuyama predicted that boredom and restlessness could fuel a rage against the establishment machine.

More than three decades later, restlessness and rage are everywhere, and Fukuyama, at 73, is still trying to make himself understood. On Sept. 8, Farrar, Straus & Giroux will publish “In the Realm of the Last Man,” a memoir. As the title suggests, Fukuyama is doubling down, pushing back against what he derides as “these stupid, superficial interpretations of the end of history” that caricatured him as a naïve Pollyanna. He sees the current plight of liberal democracy not as a rebuke to his earlier work but as a vindication. The “last men” of our age grew so restive that they fell for populist demagogues who convinced them everything was rotten — “an outcome,” he says, “that was perfectly predictable more than 30 years ago.”

One of the reasons 9/11 was so thrilling was because Islamicism at least presented a challenge. But W and Obama dispatched it without asking much (not enough?) of us.

Suppose a presidential candidate treated eliminating the national debt and reforming the welfare state as the equivalent of the moon landings? He’d have to guarantee that everyone’s ox was going to get gored: not just budget cuts but getting rid of tax breaks; Means-testing all social programs; etc. An ideal candidate would offer a plan that his own party bitched about. This would foster some sense of shared sacrifice and treat the problem (even if it is aesthetic rather than economic) with a seriousness that folks could rally round. And the numbers have grown so big that folks could believe it a superhuman challenge.

YES, BECAUSE EQUALITY!:

Andy Burnham is fighting the wrong enemy (Mani Basharzad, 20 July 2026, CapX)

Looking back, it is easy to see why. Inflation reached 25% in 1975. Britain was suffering a brain drain, with highly skilled engineers and academics leaving the country. Why would they stay when the top rate of income tax stood at 83%? Then there was the 1976 IMF bailout, followed by the Winter of Discontent. In 1979 alone, 29.5 million working days were lost to strikes. Unemployment reached 2 million. The dead went unburied, and hospitals were reduced to emergency treatment only.

When the new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, says he wants to ‘undo Thatcher’s economic legacy’, is that the Britain he wants to return to?

THE NEXT PRESIDENT HAS SUCH A REAGANESQUE OPPORTUNITY:

The United States at 250: Renewal Is the Real American Tradition (Roy Swan, 07/03/26, NY Observer)

At 250 years old, the United States of America is the most ambitious brand ever conceived. Like every great institution, it lives or dies by how well it practices what it preaches.

Fifteen years ago, leadership scholars Doug Ready and Emily Truelove called the animating spirit of powerful brands “collective ambition” in a seminal Harvard Business Review article. They captured how great leaders inspire divided people to unify for the common good through a seven-element model that stands the test of time: purpose, vision, promise, values, targets, priorities and the daily behavior of the people who carry the name. What makes great companies great can make great nations greater. Alignment endures. Misalignment rots.

Two hundred and fifty years ago in Philadelphia, imperfect men drafted the blueprint for a more perfect Union. They named a promise: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. They invoked Nature’s God. They committed to values worth dying for. They admitted the nation was imperfect on day one, yet expected it to achieve the perfection they could not deliver.

Perfecting is a verb, not an adjective. The Founders trusted us to keep building.

The tragedy of Joe Biden was that he did not have much quarrel with most of Trumpism: Identitarianism, protectionism, state capitalism, etc.

Our next president can renew the promise of the nation by undoing the damage.

CAPITALISM/DEMOCRACY/PROTESTANTISM:

What happens when liberalism loses? (Mani Basharzad, 9 June 2026, CapX)

Liberalism loses when it attaches itself only to economics. Yes, it is easy to blame the populist movements of both Left and Right that seek to undermine liberalism. But on one point, liberals should look at themselves. A liberalism that defines itself solely in terms of economic freedom cannot win the battle of ideas. Free markets are part of classical liberalism, but they are largely a by-product of the more important principles and institutions of a free society. When you have the rule of law, you can have property rights and effective contract enforcement. When you have the liberal attitude of tolerance, you can have the Royal Exchange, of which Voltaire wrote that when you enter, ‘all nations assemble for the advantage of mankind’, and ‘the Jew, the Mahometan, and the Christian bargain with one another as if they were of the same religion, and bestow the name of infidel on bankrupts only’.

To win the battle for liberalism, liberals must not confine themselves to the material benefits of free markets, but also emphasise the moral superiority of free societies. Hayek met Churchill only once, after ‘The Road to Serfdom’ had gained popularity. Churchill knew of him because of that book. When they were introduced, Churchill was, as Hayek put it, ‘stock drunk’. Churchill said to him: ‘You are completely right [about ‘The Road to Serfdom’]; but it will never happen in Britain’. As Hayek continued, ‘Half an hour later he made one of the most brilliant speeches I ever heard’.

Why, despite travelling some distance down the road to serfdom, did Britain never lose its political freedom? Why, in Churchill’s words, would this ‘never happen in Britain’? Because there is something more to liberalism than economics. Those deeper foundations resisted the road to serfdom in Britain, and they enabled its revival through Thatcher’s conservative revolution.

Liberals have failed to shape the climate of opinion and practical politics, relying too often on what Russell Kirk described as soulless ‘pleasure and pain equations’. China today is the example of a state that, viewed solely through an economic lens, appears impressive, yet has become a threat to freedom.

THE SYSTEM IS THE CENTER:

The Center Can Hold: How Jews can rebuild a middle-ground politics (David Bernstein, June 9, 2026, Sapir)

The center is not a point on a graph. Most Americans, even today with the high number of political independents, identify with one of the two major political parties. On many concrete policy questions, that center is defined not by rigid ideology but by a blend of instincts. On immigration, for example, large majorities of Americans say immigration is good for the country, roughly two-thirds support a path to legal status, and yet many of those same voters also favor stronger border enforcement and reject permissive approaches. This “both/and” pattern — combining order and openness, rights and limits — appears in issues and reflects a more nuanced public than our polarized politics suggest.

The center can also be understood as a set of people, coalitions, and norms capable of sustaining pluralism. It includes citizens and leaders who may disagree on policy but who remain willing to engage despite differences, deliberate in good faith, and operate with a shared commitment to democratic rules. The political center, then, is not simply equidistant from the Right and the Left; it is the combination of both/and thinking and the civic capacity to translate that thinking into cooperation and governance.

American Jews have flourished in a system defined by liberal democratic norms: constitutional protections, equal citizenship, religious liberty, and a culture of pluralism. Our security has never depended on numerical strength but rather on the strength of the system itself.