Do you believe in "The End of History"?

So basically Children of Men?


Well to be fair Tunisia has more or less democratized and Western Europe did not democratize in 8 years either. That said I'm not saying MENA will inevitably look like Western Europe. I tend to think Fareed Zakaria's prediction about the rise of illiberal democracies has truth to it as we see with the rise of the likes like Putin and I think illiberal democracy could easily spring up in the Muslim world.

People say Islam is incompatible with democracy but if that's true its only if by democracy you mean liberal democracy. The idea of electing one's leaders has plenty of history in the Islamic world and in fact it was more democratic before adopting European style government since the less efficient and less centralized household style of governance relied more on intermediaries that had some level of democratic legitimacy like the elected Shaykhs of the quarters and guilds.

Yes, I'm talking about illiberal democracies, after all you mentioned liberal democracies in the OP. I think they will become more popular than strongman dictatorships, that and chinese style single-party state.
Illiberal or corrupt democracies is what rules in latin america too, you can vote, you can move freely, but it's always the same guys at the top amassing fortunes and buying votes. Institutions are compromised making them unaccountable.
Another one I forgot to add to the list, the Philippines, they were never truly democratic in the western sense but Duterte is on another level as authoritarianism goes.
There is also Myanmar, people thought it was going to become a liberal democracy with a nobel prize winner at the top. LOL.
 
The Orwellian state was always thought to come about as a result of the communist state but it seems like in reality its capitalism that's bringing it about and we're willingly accepting it. We're giving away our info voluntarily to large tech companies because of the utility we get in return and we're even bring in cameras into our homes of our own accord. The pieces of the totalitarian state are there, someone just needs to put it all together.

This phenomonen I have heard often referred to under the Technocracy context. The use of technology, automation, data collection and analysis, can be used to efficiently control society. In theory people could be controlled without them ever really knowing it though, so I think it slides more into the BNW territory in that regard.
 
Yes, I'm talking about illiberal democracies, after all you mentioned liberal democracies in the OP. I think they will become more popular than strongman dictatorships, that and chinese style single-party state.
Illiberal or corrupt democracies is what rules in latin america too, you can vote, you can move freely, but it's always the same guys at the top amassing fortunes and buying votes. Institutions are compromised making them unaccountable.
Another one I forgot to add to the list, the Philippines, they were never truly democratic in the western sense but Duterte is on another level as authoritarianism goes.
There is also Myanmar, people thought it was going to become a liberal democracy with a nobel prize winner at the top. LOL.
Wouldn't it be interesting if in the future its the illiberal democracies that come out on top in terms of standards of living and levels of satisfaction from citizenry somehow? Or at the very least some other alternative form of democracy. Doubtful but would be interesting.
 
How does your thinking on this change as religious belief decreases? I agree the evangelical right has destroyed the intellect of the right though.

I think the decrease makes the hard believers more dangerous. They feel threatened and take more drastic actions to propagate their beliefs. Christians especially have a martyr syndrome where they think everyone is against them. They use these fantastical beliefs to justify their own actions in taking liberties away from others.
 
I wonder what @Jack V Savage thinks, when I made this thread I figured he'd be one poster who might still believe in The End of History as Fukiyama imagined it.

I think that liberal democracy (that is capitalism with protection of rights and a constitution and representative democracy) is pretty rad. Don't know about the rest of the issues involved here. One of the few predictions you'll see me make is this: almost everyone's predictions about the future will be wrong. And I'm a little uneasy about the "almost."
 
I fail to see how Pence is respectable other than by comparison, and a zealot to boot. I could go for a few more Andrew Sullivans. I want my sworn enemy in politics to be David Frum. What a world that would be- French would be an extremist.

He is respectable in the sense that he doesnt changes his position based on who he last spoke with.
 
I think we end up either with a technological singularity where there are no more humans and the question is meaningless or we end up with stagnation in failed democracies like in latin america.

I wouldnt say Latin Americans democracies are stagnant, most of them arent even that old and most countries seem to be moving forward not backwards.

Only Venezuela and Nicaragua seem to be walking backwards.
 
The Orwellian state was always thought to come about as a result of the communist state but it seems like in reality its capitalism that's bringing it about and we're willingly accepting it. We're giving away our info voluntarily to large tech companies because of the utility we get in return and we're even bring in cameras into our homes of our own accord. The pieces of the totalitarian state are there, someone just needs to put it all together.

I don't like this definition of "Orwellian." I've quoted this before, but here's Orwell addressing James Burnham's idea of the illiberal future (and Burnham's version of the end of history):

http://orwell.ru/library/reviews/burnham/english/e_burnh.html

Burnham is one of the most influential thinkers on the modern right, though he was smarter and more complex than people who have followed him.
 
People say Islam is incompatible with democracy but if that's true its only if by democracy you mean liberal democracy. The idea of electing one's leaders has plenty of history in the Islamic world and in fact it was more democratic before adopting European style government since the less efficient and less centralized household style of governance relied more on intermediaries that had some level of democratic legitimacy like the elected Shaykhs of the quarters and guilds.

Good points about the Islamic tradition of democracy.

One point that gets overlooked in these discussions is the colonial legacy and outside influence in all these countries. It's not like these are all independent countries that freely choose what path to take and that somehow, some take an illiberal route, others an authoritarian one, others a liberal one, etc.

Truth is, Western powers have been meddling- if not outright invading- in the region for a few centuries. When the most powerful states in the world start messing with weak ones, they'll have a big effect.

For example, there's a very good argument that the Arab Spring movement was unable to progress because of how weak its institutions were:

In Egypt, Hosni Mubarak began preparing for revolution long before it came. In the three decades of his rule, he systematically ensured that no opposition party or civil society institution grew strong enough to challenge him. But in ensuring that no institutions were powerful or independent enough to threaten his rule, Mubarak also ensured that they were too weak to support a transition to democracy after he fell.


https://www.vox.com/2016/1/27/10845114/arab-spring-failure

And who propped up all these dictators throughout the Middle East? The West, of course. The US, France and Britain, more precisely. Nasser in Egypt attempted to bring secularism and independence to the region. So naturally he was the enemy of the West and it went to great lengths to undermine him and his movement. That was almost 60 years ago. Who knows how the region would look like now if his very popular movement was allowed to develop?

Similar story with Latin America. US influence is being done away with gradually and the result is that it is undergoing the longest democratic period in its history. There have never been so many
 
Some form of democracy is the omega state of governance, the real struggle is streamlining it to a point where making the smallest changes aren't like trying to turn an oil tanker. Seems like modern democracy is a battle to see who gets to ring their hands and who gets to obstruct. Capitalism is probably the best economic system, but you're seeing the effect a lack of regulations and an intermixing of favorable policy and financial clout can have. The corporate giants are at a size when they are making the rules, and there's no positive to allowing smaller plants to grow in their shadow.
 
I think that liberal democracy (that is capitalism with protection of rights and a constitution and representative democracy) is pretty rad. Don't know about the rest of the issues involved here. One of the few predictions you'll see me make is this: almost everyone's predictions about the future will be wrong. And I'm a little uneasy about the "almost."
I'm a little surprised here, I figured you'd have more faith in liberal democracy but at the same time I respect your caution in making predictions on the kind of time scale we're talking about here. Do you at least think liberal democracy has a better chance to spread across the world than other models discussed here like illiberal democracy or authoritarian capitalism?
 
I'm a little surprised here, I figured you'd have more faith in liberal democracy but at the same time I respect your caution in making predictions on the kind of time scale we're talking about here. Do you at least think liberal democracy has a better chance to spread across the world than other models discussed here like illiberal democracy or authoritarian capitalism?

I hope!

Really, I'm not trying to be a dick, but I just don't know. I think that we're seeing throughout the West that forces we had thought permanently vanquished are more resilient than we all appreciated. Well, some of us are seeing it and some still have their heads in the sand.

This is why I really think the left made a huge mistake throwing Clinton under the bus, BTW. For either ideological or political (Sanders supporters) reasons or because they were afraid to look biased or something, people were way too reluctant to just say that this was a totally innocent, decent person who was being made out to be a criminal. And now a lot of liberals and centrists are meekly going along with the implicit idea that only Republicans should be in the FBI. I fear this could be the new normal (the Democratic nominee investigated by the FBI and treated like a criminal by the MSM even if nothing is found) or it could get worse (actual bullshit charges rather than just a bullshit investigation).
 
@Kafir-kun @Jack V Savage @Pupi @Possum Jenkins @ShinkanPo

So, how on Earth did we have this thread without reference to this:





FUKUYAMA: Well, I think there's two basic background conditions. So the first is this globalization reaction that I'd mentioned earlier that, you know, you have a middle class in the United States or working class that has really not done well in the last 30, 40 years. And I actually think it's quite legitimate for them to blame the elites who promised that, you know, as a result of globalization, everybody would be better off. But in fact, they were the losers.

The other thing, I think, has to do with our political system. Quite honestly, you know, well before Donald Trump began saying this, it wasn't working well. You know, Congress couldn't pass budgets, it couldn't - you know, it was very deadlocked. Plus - which I think there's a general feeling that interest groups, people with a lot of wealth and power, have a disproportionate say in the way that our democracy works. And so all of these put together, the institutional shortcomings and the socio-economic impacts of globalization, I think, prepared the ground for a rise of a populist.

And I'm actually surprised it took this long to get to this point because ever since the financial crisis in 2008, I think we've been ripe for something like this.
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Boy, you get saddled with "The End of History" and nobody ever listens to you again lol.
 
@Kafir-kun @Jack V Savage @Pupi @Possum Jenkins @ShinkanPo

So, how on Earth did we have this thread without reference to this:





FUKUYAMA: Well, I think there's two basic background conditions. So the first is this globalization reaction that I'd mentioned earlier that, you know, you have a middle class in the United States or working class that has really not done well in the last 30, 40 years. And I actually think it's quite legitimate for them to blame the elites who promised that, you know, as a result of globalization, everybody would be better off. But in fact, they were the losers.

The other thing, I think, has to do with our political system. Quite honestly, you know, well before Donald Trump began saying this, it wasn't working well. You know, Congress couldn't pass budgets, it couldn't - you know, it was very deadlocked. Plus - which I think there's a general feeling that interest groups, people with a lot of wealth and power, have a disproportionate say in the way that our democracy works. And so all of these put together, the institutional shortcomings and the socio-economic impacts of globalization, I think, prepared the ground for a rise of a populist.

And I'm actually surprised it took this long to get to this point because ever since the financial crisis in 2008, I think we've been ripe for something like this.
---


Boy, you get saddled with "The End of History" and nobody ever listens to you again lol.



In before

Liberalism is a mental illness.

I think we are just living in the knee jerk reaction generation.
 
Specifically I'm talking about Francis Fukuyama's famous claim at the end of the Cold War that Western style capitalist liberal democracy is the final evolution of human governance and will eventually spread across the entire world.

Even if you don't believe it will spread across the entire world, do you believe that capitalist liberal democracy is the end game government for the countries that currently practice it?

Or do you believe that another system that is currently in existence in theory or practice(Communism, Anarchism, Fascism etc) more closely resembles or is in fact the final form of human governance?

I believe it is the start to the end game, and will evolve into a global socialism type structure. There will be resistance and pockets of unrest, as old world ways die out. With the growing population and destructive power of the war machine, it is the only way. The only other answer is extinction. The cold war is still going on to some extent, and you can see it. China took the place of the USSR. I don't think they are an enemy tho, it is just millennia of tribalism and this is the current form. Tribalism will die, and I think it will eventually happen when the US and China decide to say fuck you to all the countries creating unrest, which then only makes the big players have to bunker down and get even more defensive, in an endless cycle.

Both China and US are at the peak of the current bubble, which will need to be corrected soon.
 
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The other thing, I think, has to do with our political system. Quite honestly, you know, well before Donald Trump began saying this, it wasn't working well. You know, Congress couldn't pass budgets, it couldn't - you know, it was very deadlocked. Plus - which I think there's a general feeling that interest groups, people with a lot of wealth and power, have a disproportionate say in the way that our democracy works. And so all of these put together, the institutional shortcomings and the socio-economic impacts of globalization, I think, prepared the ground for a rise of a populist.

l.

Gee, you don't say.

Pretty interesting that he- presumably- didn't feel this way in 1991 when he first wrote his famous book. So private power is even more influential now than in the early 90s, after Reaganism and Thatcherism. Just astounding.
 
Even if you don't believe it will spread across the entire world, do you believe that capitalist liberal democracy is the end game government for the countries that currently practice it? Or do you believe that another system that is currently in existence in theory or practice (Communism, Anarchism, Fascism, etc.) more closely resembles or is in fact the final form of human governance?

No. I don't believe that Western style capitalist liberal Democracy is the final evolution of human governance. I believe much of it is driven by culture and religion. Not working in Iraq, Libya, Brazil, and Venezuela, to name a few countries. A lot of these countries functioned better under a dictatorship. All four countries listed pretty much went to 'shit' after a dictatorship was removed. Why? A corrupt society and political system.
 
Specifically I'm talking about Francis Fukuyama's famous claim at the end of the Cold War that Western style capitalist liberal democracy is the final evolution of human governance and will eventually spread across the entire world.

Even if you don't believe it will spread across the entire world, do you believe that capitalist liberal democracy is the end game government for the countries that currently practice it?

Or do you believe that another system that is currently in existence in theory or practice(Communism, Anarchism, Fascism etc) more closely resembles or is in fact the final form of human governance?

I believe that the USA is Gondor. If we fall the world is done for. All other governments will become totalitarian if not already.
 
If humanity is to progress into space and colonize new worlds in the future it will happen under a United planet and a one world government.

This bullshit of "which country will get their first" is not how humans will conquer the galaxy. In fact it's what's killing the species and driving us towards madness.

The way of the future and deep space exploration and colonization will be done by the planet and the species, not by one country alone.
 
I believe in an apocalyptic end of the world in the religious sense.

I do not believe in a political end of history in the sense of arriving at a stable government beyond which there is no progress and from which there is no regression.

Liberal democracy is a very good thing, but far from perfect. Because it is far from perfect, people will always try to improve it. Often, such attempts will make things worse.
 
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