As the Cold War was ending, philosopher Francis Fukuyama asked in the title of a 1989 National Interest article if it was "The End of History?" He wrote in the essay that the end of the Cold War could also bring the "final form of human government," a nicer democracy. He expanded on the idea in his 1992 book and removed the question mark from the title, calling it The End of History and the Last Man.

The book was enormously influential at the time. As The Atlantic described the argument, "Democracy would win out over all other forms of government," countries would have to "embrace some measure of capitalism" in order to survive, and this would "invariably demand greater legal protection for individual rights."

Spoiler alert: not even close. As The Atlantic says, "It's hard to imagine Fukuyama being more wrong. History isn't over and neither liberalism nor democracy is ascendant ... most disturbingly, the connection between capitalism, democracy, and liberalism upon which Fukuyama's argument depended has itself been broken." So basically, Fukuyama's "End of History" idea was wrong about everything. But it wasn't the end of his career — he still gets quoted as an "expert." Must be nice.