Is This the End of the Post-War Dream

Is This the End of the Post-War Dream

“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.” — W. B. Yeats There was a time, not long ago, when history had a direction. It moved, however imperfectly, toward a destination imagined in the polished corridors of post-war Western capitals, universities, and international organizations. The ideal was clear and broadly shared: that nations, however wayward or encumbered by history, would arrive, eventually, at liberal democracy. That they would grow…