Michael. Peter. So what do you know about the end of history? I mostly know that 80% of the arguments about it were about the title, not the actual book.

So before we talk about the essay and the book, we should probably talk about Francis Fukuyama. He's a political philosopher who starts to work at the Rand Corporation in 1912.

In 1979, Fukuyama is also doing, he works for the Reagan administration and the State Department, the Bush administration, the Bush wanted administration. And in the summer of 1989, he publishes a little essay called The End of History.

Question mark. Oh, summer of 89. So before the wall came down.

The wall comes down, I think, towards end of the year, right? November. And you know, the Soviet Union is teetering, but still won't formally dissolve for a couple of years. There's an understanding that at this point, the Cold War is ending.

There's this lingering question in everyone's mind of what comes next, what comes next for all of us, what comes next for America. And the end of history is Fukuyama's attempt to answer that question.

And his answer really like captures the imagination of political elites, especially, and really defines how American politicians, Western politicians and academics look at the world for the next like quarter century.

You could not get away from this book. Yeah, I was in college in the mid-Auts and it was assigned by more than one professor.

I read this book twice, once in grad school and once in other grad school. And I barely remember it.

Yeah. I think a lot of that comes from like his writing style.

Yeah, I mean, look, Fukuyama is, he's a smart guy, but he revels in the safety of abstraction. And I'm not an opponent of political philosophy. I enjoy it. But there is a type of dumb person that thrives in the realm of political philosophy, because philosophical analysis provides so much abstraction that you can readily hide the fact that you are not able to accurately describe the world.

Also, Peter, I don't know if you know this, but I have a master's degree in political philosophy. I did not know that.

And what you're saying about people not knowing what the fuck they're talking about is exactly like my grad school experience.

I remember just being like, what do you mean? What exactly do you mean, please? And people not being able to articulate it.

I have a political science degree, so I'm kind of a STEM guy.

Oh, the heart science and the soft science. Now, the thesis is best summarized by a quote from the original essay.

What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, but the end of history as such. That is the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.

We did it gang. We came up with the ideal way to run a country.

I know it's crazy, but I think we got this. I think we actually got this human society thing forever.

So, yeah, you know, the initial essay is just 15 pages or so published in a little conservative journal called the National Interest.

The book comes a couple years later in 1992, and it's called the end of history and the last man. So no more question mark.

We're making statements now. Yeah, he's getting cocky.

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