Francis Fukuyama got it spectacularly wrong in 1989 when he wrote that the world was witnessing the end of history. He was writing after Tiananmen Square and at a time when anti-communist protests were spreading across the Soviet Union.It was a few months before the fall of the Berlin Wall declared communism and the Soviet Union effectively dead. From here on, Western liberal democracy was the only game in town. History — as the global battle between big ideologies — was over.Last Wednesday, November 9 (27 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall) as the world waited to hear from the architect of a new wall, it certainly didn’t feel like history had ended.The main reason history hasn’t ended is because Fukuyama got it right in one major respect. Western liberal democracy did prevail over everything else — but the Reagan-Thatcher version of economic liberalism that came with it has proved to be a really bad winner.This has been worsened by the fact that the Left has been such an appal...

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