Fukuyama's Children
CrowdSource 6.9.2025
Welcome to CrowdSource, your weekly guided tour of the latest intellectual disputes, ideological disagreements and national debates that piqued our interest (or inflamed our passions). This week: what was “the End of History”?
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Postliberal Polemics
Last week, just in time for our Wisdom of Crowds live show, the philosopher (and WoC quasi-patron saint)
ruffled feathers in a short reflection on Leo Strauss’ 1941 essay, “German Nihilism”:Strauss’ 1941 lecture prefigures the current moment in eerie ways. Today’s “post-liberals” do not have a coherent vision of what should replace liberalism. Some, like Patrick Deneen or Adrian Vermeule, seem to hope for some form of Catholic integralism where society would agree on a set of strong moral principles defined by religion. Others like Curtis Yarvin or Costin Vlad Alamariu (a.k.a “Bronze Age Pervert”) discard religion and long for a return of hierarchy and strong government. What they all have in common is a hatred of a form of liberalism that forces everyone to declare their pronouns at the end of emails to show the world that they are respectful of transgender people.
Fukuyama’s analogy is clear: just as one form of reactionary, anti-liberal thought paved the way for the Nazis in in the 1930s, so too might our post-liberals today pave the way for dictatorship.
Who Are You Calling an Integralist? Deneen objected to Fukuyama calling him an “integralist.” Integralism is an old Catholic ideology that supports a confessional state.
“Fukuyama Gets Strauss Wrong.” First Things editor and post-liberal ally R. R. Reno fired back: “The full truth is that Strauss believed that a liberal culture needs to cultivate illiberal voices within itself — the authority of human nature, for example, and the authority of God. … Has Francis Fukuyama ever spent any political capital defending them?”
The “End of History” Thesis
Fukuyama’s big idea — which first appeared in a 1989 essay, and was expanded in a 1992 book — remains the one to beat: if you’re looking to create a new theory of politics in our time, you will first have to reckon with what Fukuyama said.
So, what did Fukuyama say?
The Main Idea. Our own
took a stab at explaining it:
Fukuyama argues that history is largely driven by human nature, and that human nature has two essential parts. The first part is “desire,” by which he means something like “acquisitiveness.” Desire is expansive: It includes the impulse to pursue both basic goods (food, shelter), but also non-essential consumer goods. Free market capitalism, industrialization, and technology have … made it possible to satisfy this desire to a great degree. …
The other part of human nature Fukuyama calls “spiritedness,” an idea from ancient Greece called thymos. This is the aspect of the human being that wants to feel accomplished and proud, which motivates creativity and ambition, and which demands recognition from its peers. It cannot be satisfied by material prosperity, but only through a mutually beneficial order that grants universal recognition to all. Humanity has achieved this, so the argument goes, with liberal democracy. In a liberal democracy, we are all equal under the law, a form of universal recognition. Liberalism sublimates thymos by allowing individuals to pursue great projects of technological or national significance. It makes the human spirit “safe and domesticated.” …
The “End of History” means that eventually, everyone in the world will realize that tech-driven capitalism and liberal democracy are the only way to satisfy human society.
What is Liberalism? Fukuyama’s definition of liberalism is simple and capacious. As he put it in last summer’s Liberalism for the 21st Century conference, it consists of the recognition of universal human dignity, and the creation of institutions — in particular, the rule of law — which protects that dignity.
“Events, My Dear Boy, Events”
The “End of History” thesis is, for Fukuyama’s critics, infuriatingly hard to debunk or refute. Many have tried.
Here’s three early attacks on Fukuyama from the 1990s:
In The Specters of Marx (1993), Jacques Derrida argued that Fukuyama’s theory is just like a religious dogma that can’t be proven wrong by evidence.
In Illusion of the End (1994), Jean Baudrillard never mentions Fukuyama by name, but alludes to his thought in various ways, pointing out that the idea of the end of history has overwhelmed our capacity to imagine a better future.
In The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1995), Samuel P. Huntington (Fukuyama’s onetime professor) argues that the future of geopolitics will not be defined by liberalism, but but conflicts between great civilizational power centers.
The following post-1989 historical events have been cited to “prove” that Fukuyama is wrong:
The 9/11 Terrorist Attacks. So said (once again mentioning Fukuyama by name) Jean Baudrillard in The Spirit of Terrorism (2001).
The 2008 Financial Crisis. Enough people suggested this that Fukuyama considered the question himself in 2012.
The (first) Russian invasion of Ukraine. So wrote Walter Russell Mead in 2014.
The first election of Donald Trump in 2016. So argued Jedediah Purdy.
The (second) Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the return of Donald Trump. So writes
in a poignant essay this month for Liberties: “Two events, first the war in Ukraine and then Donald Trump’s return, mark the death of Fukuyama’s Eastern European children.”
There Is (No) Alternative
Another way to prove Fukuyama wrong is to fashion a new post-liberal political theory that will satisfy human nature and create lasting geopolitical order.
Some recent postliberal contenders:
Technocratic Monarchy. From this week’s Curtis Yarvin profile in the New Yorker: “The eternal political problems of legitimacy, accountability, and succession would be solved by a secret board with the power to select and recall the otherwise all-powerful C.E.O. of each sovereign corporation, or SovCorp.”
“Aristopopulism.” In Regime Change: Toward a Postliberal Future (2023), this is what Patrick Deneen calls his unique blend of populism and elitism that eschews liberalism and individualism.
“The Fourth Political Theory.” Aleksandr Dugin, AKA “Putin’s Brain,” developed a “fourth” political theory, after communism, fascism, and liberalism.
“Virtualism.” Reality has replaced tyranny or interference as the paramount political evil,” wrote political theorist
in his “Manifesto of Virtualism” (2021). In World Builders: Technology and the Geopolitics (2025), he expands on this idea, saying that the creation of new realities through AI and VR technologies will be the political ideology of the future.
I was handy with a rifle, my father’s 303 I fought for something final, not the right to disagree
— Leonard Cohen, “Happens to the Heart”
From the Crowd
What’s the Point? Critic
mostly agrees with ’s critique of the simulation theory:“I’m not really sure what the point of thinking about SA is.”
I agree. A few paragraphs earlier, the writer mentions “the pragmatic cash value” of Simulation Theory. I don’t think there is any. To determine the pragmatic cash value of a hypothesis, you ask how the universe would be different if it were true. But nothing would be different if the Simulation Theory were true. If we were living in a simulation, what could prove to us that we were not real? And what would it even mean for us not to be real? If the Simulator entered our world and started to make us disappear one by one, we would experience it as a change in our reality. Because the simulation — complete with the laws of physics and biology, the Homeric epics and the 19th-century Russian novels, Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven — is our reality, a world without them would be a different reality (ie, simulation).
Reality is simply what there is. You can discover whole new realms of reality, But you can’t get outside it. If you think you have, you’ve simply expanded our conception of the real. Which is actually quite an achievement — but it’s not, except as a manner of speaking, creating a whole new reality.
See you next week!
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Perhaps it is too early to say this, and insufficient time has elapsed for readers to comment, but I would speculate that there will not be many comments on this topic.
Having a substantial liberal education, with personal focused interests in religion, human atrocities, inspired creations, scientific research, art, poetry, and leaving the world a better place, I see little value in the political science terminology spouted by an endless list of pundits. To me, it seems a battle in the arena of ego over what to call the theory of the day.
This said, Fukuyama's defining liberalism as the recognition of universal human dignity and the creation of human institutions (though I am not entirely sure of the need and number) is particularly appealing to me, particularly the rule of law, which protects human dignity.
What gets me is the polarizing remarks about the radical left and comparing it to the right. It brings to mind my discussions with a highly educated colleague in Moscow who was absolute in his conviction that Ukraine started the war, that Zelensky's administration was a Nazi organization, and paralleled the beliefs of the Right in the US that the 2020 election was stolen, that COVID-19 would go away in the summer, or that Biden is a Manchurian candidate.
Yes, these are insane times, but there is no way in the world that there is one functioning neuron to equate the Left with the Right in 2025, and say they are equally as evil, lawless, reckless, unethical, and corrupt.
Let's stop with all the bullshit about this or that political ideology. How about simply agreeing that Lincolnism should guide our hearts and minds, and thus our behavior?
When Lincoln was asked what his religion was, he is said to have answered with the following:
"When I do good, I feel good,
When I do bad, I feel bad.
That is my religion."
This is my OS, my modus operandi, and it did involve the praise (recognition) of my parents for my early achievements. However, the praise of a proud mother and/or father connoted love, and over the years of reinforcement, such a Pavlovian connection became so ingrained as to no longer require love. It just felt good knowing I had done well, and perhaps left the world a tiny bit better. These thoughts on human behavior have a resemblance to the Jewish concept of tikkun olam, which dates back to the Mishnaic period. Subsequently, in medieval times, kabbalistic literature began broadening the use of the term. Modern movements of Judaism have expanded the terms to include "the thesis that Jews bear responsibility not only for their own moral, spiritual, and material welfare, but also for the welfare of society at large".[3] To the ears of contemporary pluralistic Rabbis, the term connotes "the establishment of Godly qualities throughout the world."[2]
Instead of the hypocrisy of the religious Right, I contend that the above evolves humanity rather than dividing it. Such practice has led me to the road less traveled. And this "road" is replete with LUV (Legacy, Unity, Vision). You can guess how this comment will end.
I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.