Into the Post-History

After the fall of the Soviet Union, writer Francis Fukuyama declared "the End of History." In his view, the collapse of the Bolshevik/ Communist rule in Russia meant it was now possible to create a new order of international relations composed increasingly of nations governed by liberal democratic and capitalist institutions. Fukuyama's thesis traveled a long line of politicians and philosophers who believed that peace in the world depended on "enlightened" rather libertarian values of rule by consent of the masses, elections, trade, international law.

The world having seemed to achieve such an irreversible trend toward such institutions world-wide following Desert Storm and the fall of the Soviet empire as its indirect result, Fukuyama may have been a little too optimistic, but his core principles were nonetheless libertarian in tradition going back to Locke, Jefferson, Kant, and Mill. Yes, indeed, democratic and market processes, rules, mores, and exchanges are a path to perpetual stability in the world. The Prussian philosopher Immanuel Kant derived the formula in the late 18th Century. President Woodrow Wilson attempted to incorporate the principles into the "new order" following the First World War. His formula–democracy, free trade, international law, and world disarmament–as pillars of peace were the principles of both the League of Nations following that war and also the basis of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's creation of the United Nations in the last year of World War II.

To compliment his political mentor's intellectual construction of peace, Roosevelt added his "Four Freedoms" to Wilson's formula. The Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, Freedom from Fear, and Freedom from Want. These Four Freedoms cemented the Alliance of the Western Democracies Great Britain and the United States in the global struggle against an unholy alliance of the ideas and practice of Nazism, Fascism, Racism and Militarism, the ideological enemies of all human history, if in different names. World War I and World War II cannot really be seen as two separate incidents due to the common enemy in the perceptions. Instead, the period from 1914 to 1945 needs to be considered in one giant whole, a thirty-one year conflict of struggle between the same forces: enlightened "classical" liberal/contemporary libertarian conceptions of human government pitted against liberties ageless enemy: Elite groups or rulers imposing a brutal, slavish, genocidal, tyranny over the minds and bodies of women and men in the service of that ruler or group. The enemy of enlightened liberty and freedom in World War I–German militarism used in the name of nationalism and autocracy–was the same enemy in World War II, but now with global partners (i.e. Nazi sympathizers and allies in South America and Asia).

At the end of World War II and the creation of the United Nations, what should have been a more manageable world had another "cold" conflict simmering from the ashes of 1914-1945: Bolshevism (or communist fascism) in Soviet Russia. The deal to dance with the devil in order to defeat Hitler's Nazis took the form of Churchill's and Roosevelt's alliance with Stalin and Stalin's one-party fascists state under Marxist-Leninism in Russia. Born of the rubble of Russia's World War I defeat to Germany, the Bolshevik/Communist Party rule ensured that the forces of democracy, markets, rule of law, and peaceful existence would not prevail until the ideological Communist brand of tyranny over the minds and bodies of women and men toppled from the crushing weight of its own lies. When Soviet rule over Greater Russia (which included the other 14 soviet socialist republics) finally ended in December 1991, the long awaited victory of libertarian values (democracy, etc.) over Nazism, Fascism, Racism and Militarism had finally been achieved after 77 years of direct and proxy hot and cold war. The hope of Fukuyama's thesis rested in the ideal that the vision of Wilson's Four Principles and Roosevelt's Four Freedoms had overcome the existential threat from the tyrants, the thieves, the immoral and the murderers. The End of History had arrived. It began in 1914 through accidental diplomacy leading immediately to tens of millions of dead and wounded. It lead further to two or three scores of millions of casualties in the next round against Hitler. Even the proxy wars like Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan caused tens of millions more in dead, wounded, and defiled. Indeed, there was hope.

A 77-year war between liberty and freedom on one side and totalitarian slavery on the other was now complete. Fukuyama indeed had reason for optimism. Never again would the mistake be repeated: From now, democracy, markets, law, and human fellowship must indeed reign over the relations of nations. If not, warmongers, thieves and slave masters in an international anarchy would be liable to destroy the world, a world with nuclear and biological weapons. If reason and "classical liberalism" did not rule from henceforth, the uncertainty of the future portended doom. Seventeen years following the lowering of the Soviet Union flag over the Kremlin, we are at the end of the End of History. What has happened? Later historians may point to the following as leading to the collapse of the enlightened, selfish age in which the world withdrew after 1991. It all ties into the very watchwords that governed U.S. policy since Wilson's intervention in the First World War in 1917. First, "democracy" was only practiced in America by the few smart enough to see that its general benefits could serve them narrowly. America's electorate became self-satisfied by the greed promised by a false dream of getting everything for free. Unfortunately, TANSTAAFL–"there ain't no such thing as a free lunch." Believing they deserved things without earning them, Americans in general grew ignorant and apathetic to the costs imposed on them in creating a future debt for others to carry, in the legacies of natural rights like liberty and the natural law of vigilance to protect them. Second, the wealth exploited yesterday and today was not everlasting. Someone has to pay for the ignorance and apathy. The debt is rapidly coming due. Third, when political and economic power become concentrated, the law is also for sale. It was, and someone besides the American working-middle classes bought it. And fourth, the interaction of politics, economics, and social institutions caused the pursuit of peace through human community to surrender to the an iron law of rule by the few over the many: War is more profitable and gains more power for those few who rule than peace, peace being a general benefit spread to thinly per capita to all humanity. In short, Nazism, enslaving the masses for the narrow benefit of the ruling class, is winning again. And it is up to average people who think "liberty and freedom" to live it, to defend, and win for the future generations the right to own themselves, and to create peace and prosperity for all.

What is meant by Cepia Club's Post-History and how do people benefit? Post-History is a politics, economics, and society of people who live believing that they have natural rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (the pursuit, not the guarantee of it). Post-History is a time when the line must be drawn between the lovers of life, liberty and happiness and those Nazis/Fascists who seek to steal it. If we draw that line together, it can be kept. People benefit by unifying in neighborhoods, between households, in the communities where land and people meet. In order to defeat the coup d'etat against the republic, against the prosperity of average people, against the rule of law in America via the Constitution, and against the natural law and right of Creation given to all people to speech and thought without censorship and to be guaranteed the ownership of their own property (their very minds and bodies themselves most importantly), then ALL WE Americans must rebel. WE must fight with our beliefs, our hearts, our spirits, and our bodies. WE can no longer live apart if we will save ourselves. Post-History is the "New Age Now Beginning." It is the era of united rebellion, the final struggle through peaceful, positive, moral action and civil disobedience against the lies told by party politicians, false prophets, and pundits. Truth in us; Truth a weapon.