Brian Underwood Jr.

Capitalist and proud

Seventeen years ago, Francis Fukuyama argued that history had concluded with the “unabashed victory of economic and political liberalism” in his seminal and controversial 1989 essay “The End of History?” Essentially, Fukuyama contended that serious intellectual challenges to Western liberalism had ceased and that, except for the occasional “crackpot messiah,” Western liberalism had achieved victory “in the realm of ideas.” I take issue with that thesis, as do many.