The Righteous Mind

Why I Can't Stop Thinking About 'The End of History'

The Ezra Klein Show, 11 September 2026. The book comes up at 29 min 0 sec in.

Fukuyama invokes Jonathan Haidt's account of motivated reasoning to explain his own drift inside neoconservative social circles: rather than reasoning from evidence to conclusions, people start with preferred conclusions and use their cognitive abilities to marshal supporting evidence. He applies this to understand how his own thinking was shaped by the approval of those around him.

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