The communists had an imperial ideology that claimed to know the directions of history [bold mine-DL]. But in the end, it was overpowered by ordinary people who wanted to live their lives, and worship their God, and speak the truth to their children. ~President George W. Bush

The irony of Bush’s statement here–mocking the ideological determinism of the communists in a speech bristling with references to the certain judgements and direction of history–is simply overwhelming.  If I thought his speechwriters capable of it, I would say that they put this line in there as part of an inside joke at Mr. Bush’s expense. 

Mr. Bush’s Prague speech lays out plainly that he thinks modern history is the story of the progressive advance of freedom.  He is horribly wrong, but that isn’t my point.  He believes, as he insists at several points, that it is “inevitable” that freedom will triumph.  This is a deterministic and ideological statement.  There is nothing inevitable in history.  It is a mark of actual human freedom–our free will–that ensures that there is no sure or straight or inevitable path of development for any one nation, much less for the whole world.  Indeed, if freedom were the inevitable outcome that cannot be denied, there would never really be much need to work for it, cultivate it or fight on its behalf.  It would just happen spontaneously.  Strangely, this is what pro-war ideologues believed would occur in post-invasion Iraq, yet the drive to invade was also fueled by the revolutionary desire to “liberate” and the missionary desire to spread “freedom.”  These are the people who believe that everyone is naturally free but is everywhere in chains and that it is their, our, obligation to break those chains to “restore” people to their natural state.  This consequently turns into a chaotic mess, since people are not naturally free and political freedom is not some spontaneously occuring weed that sprouts out of the ground. 

Why is it that the people who are most intent on spreading an ideology feel compelled to tell others that their ideology is the natural and unavoidable conclusion to which all people must eventually come?  If the claims of inevitability were true and if the truths being preached were actually “self-evident,” every nation would embrace them without any prompting from anyone else.  Yet that does not happen.  So why this talk of inevitability?  It is to soften resistance and weaken the resolve to oppose what others very much wish to oppose.  It is an ideologue’s version of “we will bury you.”  Like Agent Smith in The Matrix, Mr. Bush is saying, “The future is our time.”  As we have seen in Pessimism, however, those who invoke the future do so to legitimise the injustices they are committing in the present.