[Revolting cat!]

A good description of the current picture but short on perspective and the vision thing which is something that Fukuyama had. Also, when the author speculates what Fukuyama might have said (or "countered" as he puts it) after 9/11, he shows that he hasn't done his homework, because Fukuyama indeed updated his End of History essay following 9/11, in an article in the Wall Street Journal. (He defended and expanded on his previous thesis as hanson correctly guesses.)

Other than that this article is full of the parochial American prejudices and hatreds for the Europeans and their welfare state preferences, which work just fine for them and certainly not much worse than our own welfare state preferences, which we like to sweep under a rug and never discuss, because that would be, you know, "racism".

In the end, Fukuyama may be wrong, but Hanson does little to convince this cat!

[x]

It would be nice to see a response from Fukuyama, but why should he bother? I don't think Hanson is really addressing the same questions that Fukuyama did. It looks like he just picked up on that phrase "end of history" and went off in his own direction.

Fukuyama was talking about the long-term effects of modern democracy and capitalism in taming the forces that disrupted the world in the past. If we are going to be at war for a long time, that changes the situation, and the simplistic prophecy of "the end of history" -- at best a simplification -- won't happen. But Hanson doesn't seem to touch on the deeper philosophical question. Fukuyama on Hanson would be worth more than this shallow Hanson article (not) on Fukuyama.