Australia is approaching American levels of anger. Here’s how we defuse the bomb

October 27, 2026 — 5:00am

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Francis Fukuyama didn’t get annoyed with me for accusing him of being almost unAmerican. Probably the world’s most famous political scientist, he was born in the USA and lives there still. I wasn’t charging him with treacherous loyalties or politics but of an almost unAmerican modesty.

He is, notoriously, the author of The End of History and the Last Man, published 34 years ago and still selling in many languages around the world. The first half of the book’s title has been used by the leaders of the great powers and high school debaters and innumerable others in between. Not to embrace it but, almost universally, to reject it. “It might be the most maligned, unfairly dismissed and misunderstood book of the post-war era,” wrote Paul Sagar of King’s College, London.

Critics denounced the idea that liberal democracy’s triumph over communism could have delivered the ultimate model for society – “the final form of human government”. The concept of the “end of history” was rejected by dictators and democrats alike. Including Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin and Joe Biden. Margaret Thatcher is supposed to have heard the book’s title and expostulated: “The end of history? The beginning of nonsense.”

Fukuyama has borne all this stoically, patiently. “I have been asked several times a week over the past three decades whether I wished to recant my argument,” he writes in his new book. “None of the individuals asking have read more than the title of my essay or book. In particular, none bothered to read the last five chapters of my book, which dealt with the problem of the Last Man.”

He’s never attacked his critics personally or rushed to defend himself. Famous American public figures are not known for their restraint. But that’s only the beginning of his modesty. He might well have titled his new book I Was Right. Because he has never argued that events,........

© The Age