Where the West went wrong

On the inevitable end of the end of history

Plato and President Trump.
(Image credit: Illustrated | Hemis / Alamy Stock Photo, Justin Sullivan/Getty Images, imagoRB/iStock)

Francis Fukuyama may yet prove to be right in predicting the end of history. But there is no doubt that he was premature. The idea that people have reached an "end point" of "ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government" quite obviously seems out-of-step with our political reality in 2018. It could still happen one day. But it surely hasn't happened yet.

Fukuyama knows this. However, to ensure that this is only a temporary setback — not a permanent blow — for his thesis, he has penned Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment.

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Shikha Dalmia

Shikha Dalmia is a visiting fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University studying the rise of populist authoritarianism.  She is a Bloomberg View contributor and a columnist at the Washington Examiner, and she also writes regularly for The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and numerous other publications. She considers herself to be a progressive libertarian and an agnostic with Buddhist longings and a Sufi soul.