10 December 2006
The End of History. (Revision Thirteen.)
I remember reading Francis Fukuyama’s End of History article a few years back. That was back when some people believed it. Even at that time, I felt like there was something suspicious about it. Perhaps such a sweeping statement about history would have carried more weight if there were some actual history behind it. Even so, there was something more to sour chord I heard than a mere lack of evidence. I guess I am always somewhat suspicious to anyone claiming an impending end to history. There is a certain irony in the parallels between the predictions of scholars and the prognostications of ranting street preachers. Honestly, I don’t really trust either.
So in 1995 or so, it was the End of History. Revision number thirteen or so. Totally unlike the End of History that was supposed to come from Alexander the Great, with Alexandrias springing up all over the place as all cultures enlightened themselves with Greek wisdom. And unlike the End of History that was supposed to come from the Pax Romana, where roads and civilization connected all people until they became one people. Or the abortive one that Napoleon foresaw, with the monarchies of the world giving way to the inevitable future. Or the inevitability of early 20th century globalization, which collided unpleasantly with the inevitability of the Great Depression and the inevitability of the First World War. Or the inevitable triumph of the ‘genetically superior’ fascists over all ‘lesser races,’ (quotes indicating that I’m being sarcastic, which should be totally obvious) and the 99.4% shorter than advertised thousand year Reich ‘End of History.’ Or the inevitable progress of dialectical materialism and the red-flagged ‘End of History,’ whose vanguard party showed itself quite adept at adapting the worst parts of capitalism in the collapse of the Workers’ Paradise. So call me crazy, but I’m a bit cynical of the ‘Democracy uber alles’ hypothesis. But it is not the inaccuracy of the claim that concerns me, rather the fact the claim was made at all.
Looking back at the ‘End of History’ roll, I have a hard time considering that list a recounting of heroes. Something about the ‘world-conquering ideology’ thing seems to draw out the worst in people. To the best of my knowledge, this is a new viewpoint for America. The United States has always (at least ostensibly) seen the spreading of democracy as in its national interest. Yet even the founding fathers did not see it as a world-conquering ideology. Jefferson was cynical as to whether it would even hold on here, much less spread. We always saw it as a tenuous experiment, not a historical inevitability.
Where did this idea of historical inevitability start? Gut instinct tells me to look to St. Augustine. After all, he was the one who revised historiography from a ever-repeating cycle into a path that leads somewhere. But it was the City of God that went somewhere, not the City of Man. Next guess is the Enlightenment. Progress is great. Progress will take us somewhere. Where exactly that is never quite gets answered. That is, never gets answered until Nietzsche. We are progressing toward perfection, toward invulnerability, toward godhood. It is inevitable. We make god, we use god, we outgrow god, we kill god, we replace god, we become god. One problem, though. There’s not really enough room for ‘we’ at the end of that inevitable progression. There might be just enough space for an ‘I.‘ Which, of course, makes nihilism not quite the most populist of philosophies. Like Everclear, the Will to Power is a spirit too intense for all but a few.
That is, until you mix it with something else. If you turn it into a cocktail, you open it up for mass consumption. And that is when it becomes dangerous. Kind of like Ridley Scott’s Alien, it implants itself in a host and shortly thereafter bursts out a monster. So nihilism finds economics by way of Marx.
Pretty soon, we have Communism, the idea that it is the inevitable destiny of the workers to rule. Next, nihilism finds science and implants itself by way of eugenics. Out pops fascism, the idea that it is the inevitable destiny of the genetically superior to rule. Conveniently, the founders of this philosophy discover that they themselves are that ‘master race.’ In the latest incarnation, nihilism grabs religion by way of Wahab and becomes Islamism. The inevitable destiny of Islam to rule. And all of these systems rule by any means necessary. After all, it is a duty to help along historical inevitability in the name of progress, and if it is inevitable, any means you use will be vindicated in the inevitable victory. But how many inevitable systems have failed? How many proved unsustainable when the amoral methods used to propagate them proved no longer effective? There is a certain irony to it. Inevitability gives you license to do whatever you want, which in turn lets your system succeed for a time. Yet when your end inevitably comes up short, you are judged on the means. And the ring betrays its owner, over and over again.
There was a strain of democracy which took the license of inevitability. The first French revolution, the legitimate daughter of the Enlightenment, believed itself to be one of the first steps in the unstoppable march of progress. The fire that revolution started burned itself out quickly, becoming a monster in the process. It vastly overestimated the security of its end, and in the process lost that end. It was left only with the consequences of the terrible means used to pursue that end.
The American framers understood the fragility of their own cause. They understood their experiment dangled by a thread upon the fickle nature of men. To overestimate the goodness of those men was to invite disaster. They considered the capacity of men to govern themselves to be self-evident. Not the quality of men to do so. The tenuous experiment reminded us that it was a dream, a whisper, a hope, something easily lost if we became irresponsible with it. Not an entitlement. When we view this gift as an inevitable result of our goodness, our badness will prove itself once again. We are on the first republic. The French are on the seventh. It is ironic that the group that viewed democracy as inevitable lost it over and over again, yet the one that saw it as tenuous held on to it for so long. And here is my fear. If we are seriously entertaining thoughts of the inevitability of our form of government, then we are closer than we ever were to losing it. We must remember how fragile, precious and rare a gift we have in self-governance. If we do not, government by the people, for the people may well perish from the earth. It is strange, really. Look for an end to history, and you get an end you don’t want. But lose your end, and you just may find it. I think I’ve heard that somewhere before.
15:00 Posted in Thoughts | Permalink | Comments (3) | Email this
Comments
I’d like to nuance this with a bit of dynamic tension…
Just kidding, I actually think you’re totally wrong about the US still being on the first republic, which isn’t a much nuanced view at all. :)
The obvious argument, with which you would likely agree, is that the Articles of Confederation represent the first republic, making the Constitution the SECOND republic.
I would actually go several steps further than that and say we’re on the third republic (at least). The destruction of federalism that occurred during the Progressive Era was so complete that it qualifies as a revolution. The goal of the Progressive movement was the perfecting of human institutions. So, in this case, government. For Progressives, the formula went something like this: scientific study + time + innovation = perpetual improvement (sort of like the historical inevitability you described). They had no appreciation for the permanent things; they simply didn’t believe in the existence of permanent, unchanging things. In fact, when faced with ideas that claimed permanence, the Progressives actively sought their destruction in an attempt to make room for progress.
The idea of America, as we understand it, is based entirely on permanent things. “We hold these truths to be self-evident…” These truths are self-evident yesterday, today, and forever. There is nothing transient about this, nothing that lends itself to “progress.” You can’t perfect truth, it just is. Of course, we may gain a deeper understanding of truth as time passes – Thomas Jefferson wrote that it was self-evident that all men were created equal, but that didn’t save my great-great-grandfather from slavery. But the fact that we couldn’t live up to the promise of our creed also doesn’t make it any less noble.
SO, when the Progressives gained momentum in the late 19th/early 20th century, they went about deconstructing federalism because they found all of the permanent truth a bit too stifling. A great deal changed during that time, but I think the 17th Amendment (direct election of Senators) probably tipped the scales. Either that or the federal income tax. After that, populism was an unstoppable train, and, to shamelessly mix metaphors, the bottle was uncorked.
The framers would find our government almost unrecognizable now. I’m not lamenting that fact necessarily (though I do have a big crush on Alexander Hamilton). Maybe it had to be this way, but the point is that we’re not on the first republic any more.
The remarkable thing is that, unlike the successive French republics, the change I’m describing happened in an orderly way, via ballots not bullets. So I guess you and I can agree that we’re still better than the French. :)
Moreover, and importantly, Dave is a chump. Sort of like the French (but less accented).
Peace,
J
PS - Stop plagiarizing me without attribution (then maybe I'll stop calling you a chump - deal?).
Posted by: Jana | 14 December 2006
Vive la France. (Except for the overrated food, the snooty attitude, and the girls with underarm hair thing.)
I'm not really sure how to counter an argument based on the hotness of Alexander Hamilton, being a guy and all. So I guess I'll have to cede that point to you.
I'll also (mostly) give ya the Articles of Confederation point, though I would point out that still could be argued. The America of the Articles of Confederation is structurally and legally different from the America of the Constitution, but I'm not sure how qualitatively different the country was. Generally, a transition between modes of government involves crisis or violence. The debates between the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists were civil and reasoned. Additionally, many of those who wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation also wrote the Constitution. From that perspective, the Articles are more of a rough draft, and the same framers (more or less) hammer out a completed composition with the Constitution. (Lots of cool alliteration. Like that? I learned it during my brief spans of consciousness during the K-school. Hehe.) So even if the final copy was a total rewrite, it is a revision of an existing thing, not a new thing entirely. I'll cede the point anyways, because I'm going to make a structural argument about the third republic thing.
So the third republic thing. Traditionally, the numberings of governments are driven by a massive structural change all at once. Time span defines the difference between evolutionary change and revolutionary change, and if we were to number every evolutionary change, every government in the world would be on their one trillionth republic. Revolutionary change happens all at once (even if it had been building for a while,) and is recognized as a watershed event by those on all sides, whether they agree with the change or not. So there is something dialectical about the resolution of certain issues in the American republic, specifically state’s rights under a federal system and the role of direct participation in governance. Certainly that dialectic has moved far from the framers’ words, and probably from their intent as well. But that process lacks the ‘watershed-ness’ of something like the rise of Napoleon. Anyone on the street at the time could tell you that the government under Napoleon was dramatically different than the previous government. So if you have a new republic, everyone should know it is a new republic without having to be told. On that basis, I would limit our maximum amount of republicai (not really a word) to two.
There is always a temptation to see a past that never was. I completely agree that the idea of Progressivism is uniquely driven by the Enlightenment, and is qualitatively different from the philosophical underpinnings of the majority of the framers, and hence different from the principles behind the Constitution. However, I would strongly dispute the idea that Progressivism is a new philosophy in the United States. The Jeffersonians were nothing if not progressives. During the time of the first French revolution, they were calling each other ‘Citizen’ in the streets. This is the late 1700s, not the early 19th Century. The Hamiltonians won the day in their time, but their opposition was hardly light, and never really died out. We can trace the modern-day progressives back to the Francophile Jeffersonians, and them back in turn to the Enlightenment. So when the opposition had their day, and continues to have it, they reshaped the laws. But they were not new, nor were their ideas. I like how you stated the equation that leads to ‘progress uber alles.’ That equation has roots all the way back to the 1600s. Anyways, my point is that the framers would not find our form of government unrecognizable, for they were very able to recognize the consequences of a Jeffersonian form of government. The Hamiltonians would of course be unhappy, but they were unhappy with the Jeffersonians even back then. There is nothing new under the sun.
Anyways, what I’m trying to say is that I completely agree that there has been a lot of change, and that our current form of government is not what the framers had in mind, for better or for worse. The Jeffersonians came back with a vengeance, and undid many of the things that Hamilton had done. However, I disagree on structural terms with the idea that we are on the third or more republic. This would be simply a question of definitions, if it were not for what is proved by peaceful transitions. Cultural Anthropology broadly defines societal structures into two camps: rules-based and relationship-based. (There is an interesting paper on Russians being a unique fusion of the two, but I am too lazy to write it.) We tend strongly toward rules-based (less so in Rhode Island.) During the 2000 election, there were no tanks in the streets, no talk whatsoever of a coup, no even conception that the government wouldn’t just go on after the Supreme Court decided one way or another. Certainly there would be protests, be complaints, be lots and lots of name-calling either way it went. But nobody got out their Kalashnikovs. Rule of law was so strong that even in a highly contested and highly charged election, people still trusted in the structures of governance. And even if the framers would not like what we’ve done with the place, this is still one testament to their craftsmanship. The structures endured change, the structures endured shock and strain. American governance only came crashing down once, and that was only in half of the country. If the structures survive a challenge, they remain the first republic. They only become the second republic if they lose and the rafters all fall down. After that dispute was resolved with much bloodshed, the structures have endured. So structuralism is not just semantics. And from a structures point of view, we are on the first republic, second if one ceded the point on the Articles.
That was fun. Hehe.
Im going to get sushi now. See ya.
Posted by: Dave | 19 December 2006
Hi everybody.
In the name of fair play and all, I must note for the record that Jana had a very good reply to my, umm, Dave's comeback. It was well argued and well written, and actually used things like grammar and logic and other things besides just ad hominem attacks all the time, so in other words it was markedly different than my, uh, Dave's writing style. Tragically, Im not posting it because it is 1) in email format and Im not sure if its authorized to post, and 2) so well argued that it would make me look bad, both of which clearly forbidding any sort of publication. Besides, Dave slipped me a $20 so that he could have the last word. Really. So Im a bad referee. Whatever.
Respectfully,
A (entirely fictional) referee.
Posted by: Referee. | 24 December 2006
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