 Unlike Fukuyama, John Rawls (1921–2002) never argues that the liberal democratic ideal is the necessary endpoint of historical development. Instead, Rawls's first priority is the justification of a particular conception of liberal justice, one that supports basic political and civil freedoms, and also dictates significant economic redistribution. At the same time, influenced by Kant and Hegel (2000, 330), Rawls is concerned to show that the ideal he describes is possible (1996, xx). By this, he means that it is reachable from the present and, once attained, capable of lasting “in perpetuity” (1971, 131; 1996, 18).  He also intends for his demonstration of a just society's possibility to increase its probability: he claims that the Weimar Republic disintegrated into Nazism because its main players lost faith in the idea of a pluralistic society (1996, lxi–lxii). 