If history is a story about humankind ["his story"] that begins with socialization and an associated language to document it: What is this story about? Where does it end? The first question is easier. The story is about how groups of people [governments] have struggled with how to regulate their own societies and interact with other groups. So we learn about governments, and wars, and treaties, and revolutions, and ideologies – all those things that men have done to deal with the problems of group and society formation.
But the second question, What is the end of history? is more confusing. It certainly doesn’t end only because humankind no longer exists, because history is more than a travelogue. Well, Hegel [Kojève, Fukayama] tell us that we’ve reached the end of history already. The idea goes something like this. History is a story about how mankind has collectively tried to answer the question of how we will live together in society. They essentially say that since the American and French Revolutions, we’ve arrived at the answer. We will live in democratic, free-market societies that maximize individual liberties while maintaining the social order. So we already know where we’re going – thus the end of history. Now, the question is How do we get there? This is, at least, my understanding of what they are saying. I may not have it the way they said it, or even what they mean, but I like it the way I understand it.
The reason I hooked onto this idea was because it explained a strong feeling from my earlier life that I never really understood. Back in my late adolescence, I got involved in the Civil Rights movement in my part of the country – the South. At the time, it felt like I caught it, kind of like you catch a cold. Over the course of a brief time, I saw that the world I had grown up in, the Segregated South, was absurd and had to change. Suddenly, the whole fabric of the society around me looked wrong. Things I’d seen all my life took on a new color [apt choice of words]. I had met the Buddha on the road, and never looked back.
But that’s not the feeling I’m talking about. Throughout the fifties and sixties, this part of the country had some really dark days – as many white southerners fought the changes that were in the wind. But through it all, I never doubted that things would change. You sure wouldn’t have felt that from reading the papers, or walking on the streets – at least not for a long time. And I always wondered why I was sure that the change would come. I’m certainly no seer. But I even felt that way about South Africa [Apartied], Russia [the U.S.S.R. Communism], "Red" China. In all of those cases, I was sure the way they were wouldn’t last, even though I wasn’t ever sure that I would live long enough to see them change.
The notion of the end of history explained my intuitive feelings about civil rights in the South and in South Africa. It explained my comfort that Asian Communism would fail [if we avoided thermonuclear holocaust]. I feel the same way now about Myanmar [Burma] and Ahmadinejad’s Iran. Ain’t going to last. They are too retro – dictatorships, theocracies – too far from the conclusions of history. They don’t maximize individual liberties while maintaining the social order. They aren’t free-market democracies, even though they vote in both places. They are trying to flow against history.
And even through the current roar of the tea baggers, the birthers, the Republican Congressmen, Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, etc. [all of whom profess some kind of patriotic "rights" meme], I have that same intuition. I may not live to see the day, but their world view is not going to prevail. It’s just not inclusive enough to maximize individual liberties while maintaining the social order. They’re trying to stand in the road and block the inevitable, and that just doesn’t work. They may win another round [like they did in 1994 or 2000], but in the end, I’m sure they’re doomed. We’ll have Universal Health Care, birth control, and something like Social Security, when it’s all said and done. We won’t have the dreaded socialism that they predict, but we won’t have what they want either. It’s just too one-sided. What they call "entitlement" in a pejorative way will turn out to be "entitlement" as we think of privacy and freedom – part of a liberal free-market democracy. They’re trying to swim upstream against the flow of history. It just doesn’t work. History has already spoken…
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