NPQ | Is the idea of a volksgeist—the unique way of life of a commonly rooted people—now over in the postmodern world with all its hybrid cultures? The American Creed is really a "geist" without a "volk."
Fukuyama | "Volksgeist" was always a kind of fantasy. Johann Gottfried Herder, who employed the idea, argued that a "volksgeist" was some ancient, subconscious feeling of community. German identity itself didn't really exist until the 19th century. What he didn't appreciate was that all these attributes had been socially constructed at some point and mixed into a German brew.
Volksgeist is an unwritten set of social norms and values that a society aspires to. As you say, the American creed does not have a "volk" in the sense that its way of life is shared by many races and cultures.
NPQ | The late Isaiah Berlin famously made the distinction between "negative" and "positive" freedom—the first being "freedom from" tyranny and interference and the second being "freedom to" do what one will in his or her zone of non-interference; the freedom of self-realization.
As you pointed out in your argument about "the end of history," negative freedom has pretty much been accepted universally, in principle if not in practice, since the end of the Cold War. Even in China the zone of personal space has grown immensely.
But, almost by definition in a diverse world, positive freedom, the "freedom to," is not universal. Some people want to wear headscarves, others want to marry the same sex.
After the "end of history" aren't most conflicts now over positive freedoms?
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