The problem with the End of History concept is that it implicitly assumed that there would be some maintenance going on.

When a doctor pronounces a patient well on the way to a complete recovery from a dangerous disease, he assumes that his medical advice will be followed, that the drugs he prescribed will be taken per the directions, and that the patient will not almost recover from pneumonia and then start snorting anthrax particles or ingesting botulism toxin.

This is life. I go to the store and buy food and then a week or less later have to do it again. I get the feeling sometimes that I will be buying food for the rest of my life. And if people did not take this approach there would be no history to end.

But some would prefer to view things as the “era” theory of history. Concepts come and go like hemlines and hair lengths. It just happens.

How many of you know that they took down all of the “fallout shelter” signs in government buildings over 10 years ago? How many know that they disposed of all those supplies of emergency food and radiation detectors they had stored away? How many know that the USAF shut down the Cheyenne Mountain headquarters of NORAD a few years ago and the place is now it is a big hollowed-out-piece-of-rock curiosity?

The times they are a changing. Back.