There is No Right Side of History

Francis Fukuyama anticipated the end of history in 1989 but all we have done since is to fight to avoid being caught on the “wrong” side of it.

Photo: History in HD on Unsplash

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The final segment of the 1996 Halloween anthology episode of The Simpsons concludes with America being forced to choose between two “hideous space reptiles” masquerading as both presidential candidates: “it’s a two-party system,” the aliens triumphantly argue once exposed, “you have to vote for one of us!” With the country conscripted to the alien war machine shortly thereafter, the last word goes to Homer Simpson who, in response to a comment from his wife about their curious new national priorities, says “don’t blame me, I voted for [the other guy].”

Judge television’s enduring cartoon everyman for indifference to alien annexation but let no one accuse him of being on the wrong side of history. 

Francis Fukuyama anticipated the end of history in 1989 but all we have done since is to fight to avoid being caught on the “wrong” side of it. Claiming the moral high ground is not new. The Cold War made such hedging redundant but, absent that framework, and given the decline of religion, we now broadly appeal to the record over the referee. Let history judge us instead of the gods themselves. The appeal is obvious: referencing the record requires no effort. This is why we address political issues not as problems to solve but as opportunities to collect a been there, done that, took a selfie in an “I’m with stupid” t-shirt.

When we talk about climate change as the greatest existential threat to life on earth today, for example, are we motivated to finally clean up after ourselves or because no one wants to explain to their grandchildren why there are no more elephants? 

Last week marked the one year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. We in the West have thus far done right by our ally but have we been motivated to do the right thing for its own sake or because bolstering a democracy under siege is convenient?

The polarization thesis suggests that knowing where someone stands on one issue can predict where they will report on others. This sounds insightful—we have the data!—but it crowds out any consideration of motive. Not that you can tell what’s in someone’s heart—or, for that matter, to suggest that all action requires motive. Still, if we are so concerned about this political phenomenon we ought to be curious enough to consider when “don’t blame me, I voted for the other guy” went from punchline to position.

Believing that there is a right side of history is fatalism. The Atlantic’s David A. Graham called out President Obama in 2015, for example, for repeatedly invoking “the right side of history” on a number of issues: “[his] position represents a different sort of abdication, a chance to write off the hard work of politics—both enacting policies and trying to bring skeptics around to his position. If he’s on the right side of history, why bother? Everything’s coming his way anyway.” Graham also noted that President Clinton was just as fond of the phrase and I think we can attribute the latter President Bush’s “with us, or with the terrorists” line to the same trend.

This leads us to the core of the problem: “the right side of history,” as the late British judge Tom Bingham observed of the similarly encumbered and ambiguous term “the rule of law” (in his book by the same name), is all too easily invoked by any and all. Case in point, Chinese President Xi Jinping said his “country stands on the right side of history” in his recent New Year Address. Fittingly, Andrew Sullivan once reduced the phrase to little more than self-flattery.

I am not the first to comment on this trend but I do want to further the conversation by noting the obvious alternative measure: character. Life should be less about how history or the gods themselves will judge us and more about how we judge ourselves.

My favourite recent example of character is from the former Republican strategists who came together to found the Lincoln Project, ending the relationships they spent entire careers building on their “own” side and drawing suspicion from the “other” side. As founding member Stuart Stevens says in the final episode of Karim Amer and Fisher Stevens’s recent Showtime documentary series about the group: 

Look, here’s the key: there’s nothing noble about us in the least. The cause is noble. You don’t have to think we’re good people. You don’t have to agree with us. You don’t have to like us. But we’re useful. And if you really believe this is a fight for democracy, and if you really believe it’s an existential fight, you need every useful son of a bitch you get can on your side.

Stevens is not telling a redemption story. He’s reminding us that anyone, at any time, can stop doing the wrong thing and start doing the right thing. That's called character.