Historians Offer A Dire Warning To U.S. Ahead Of Its 250th Birthday

As the United States nears its 250th anniversary, two historians of the world’s longest-lasting democracies say the country’s fate may depend on whether Americans can rediscover a declining civic skill: compromise.

“We have to figure out a way to compromise, to strike bargains,” Josiah Ober, a Stanford University political scientist, historian, and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, said when asked how the U.S., as a democracy, can last another 250 years. “Without bargaining, the whole collective self-government thing goes down the tube.”

Ober and fellow historian Brook Manville have become experts on this, having studied what worked, what failed and what lessons modern democracies can take from Ancient Athens, the Roman Republic, Great Britain’s constitutional monarchy, and the founding of the U.S. Their findings were published in their book, ”The Civic Bargain: How Democracy Survives.”

“We’re not in the worst shape,” Ober said of the U.S. today, but there are signs similar to ones seen before other democracies fell apart.

These include infighting among citizens, extreme political polarization and a decline in civic engagement and education, he and Manville said.

“A lot of these things we have seen before,” Manville continued. Today’s political divides, for example, have arisen in all democracies of the past, “and it usually is either corrected or it leads to demise.”

Manville added, “The key thing is not, ‘is this worse than what we did before?’ but rather, ‘is there a chance to recover in a way that we’ve recovered in the past?’”

In the case of Classical Athens, its democracy collapsed after infighting, political instability, and a great war, but it managed a comeback after recognizing and correcting its errors, Manville said. The Romans had similar recovery attempts, but “just couldn’t get there, and that was the end of the Roman Republic,” he added.

“Can it be turned around? Yes. There are examples of this,” Ober said. “If it doesn’t get turned around, could the whole thing go down the tubes and could you have a boot on your neck in the next generation? Yes. That could happen.”

To achieve more stability, the U.S. must go back to its roots of self-government and recognize the very reason for the 250-year celebrations: the signing of the Declaration of Independence, one of the nation’s most difficult bargains, which preceded the even harder-to-agree-upon U.S. Constitution, they said.

The founders had disagreements over taxes, slavery, wartime disruptions, and fears of a British return, according to Ober and Manville. Their first constitution attempt, with the Articles of Confederation, failed. The final one, which has since been amended 27 times, was at the time “the best bargain available,” Ober said.

“The idea is, that’s the beginning, and then you’re supposed to, in that ongoing democracy, renegotiate. And it should be getting better over time,” said Ober.

Failure to compromise and respect one another as citizens can lead to an enemy mindset and “you don’t bargain with your enemies, you destroy them,” he said.

Nationwide divides and talk of an “enemy within” have increased in recent years.

One academic analysis found that President Donald Trump, like other presidents before him, predominantly used the word “evil” during his first term in office to describe foreign threats. Since taking office a second time, he has primarily used the word for political opponents, journalists, federal prosecutors and other critics.

A University of Cambridge study also found that social and political division has increased by 64% in the U.S. since 1988 ― most of which occurred over the last 18 years. A Pew Research Poll published last month also found that Democrats and Republicans place more importance on advancing their own policies than on finding common ground, and that most people in one political party hold a grossly unfavorable view of someone in an opposing party.

Partisan stalemates among U.S. lawmakers have also led to more government shutdowns, the most recent of which lasted a record 76 days.

“We’re in a difficult time,” Ober said, “and what we say in the book is, yeah, democracies can fail. And sometimes when they fail, there’s gonna be a boss. There will be some individual, or some gang will take over, and they will tell you what to do. If they’re not entirely aligned with your preferred way of doing things, you’re going to suffer from that.”

But there’s still hope, both said.

Polls consistently show that most Americans want both parties to solve problems and compromise. Ober said there are also plenty of people “who are really putting their shoulder to the wheel and saying, ‘Let’s start here.’”

These efforts include expanding civic education in schools and community outreach through nonpartisan organizations (a list of which can be found on Manville’s website).

It also includes neighborhood cleanups, local charity work, and attending school board or city government meetings, all of which encourage a sense of belonging and involvement in a community, according to the nonpartisan National League of Cities.

Lessons from past democracies similarly emphasize the importance of public service.

In all three historical democracies studied, near-constant warfare meant citizens served in the military. This fostered a “sense of responsibility that goes along with the freedoms and privileges of citizenship,” Manville said.

Such unity was seen in the U.S. during World War II, when Americans fought alongside one another on the front lines, they said.

“They defended certain things that were the American way, and out of that came a certain positive ethos,” Manville said.

No matter the current state of affairs, both Manville and Ober stressed that the U.S. has made tremendous strides and is better off today than in the past.

“Having made it this far is really remarkable; having survived a nightmare civil war is remarkable,” Ober said. “The Jim Crow era was just horrific; we survived that.”

Manville said of this year’s milestone, “The birthday card should be, ‘Congratulations, you made it this far.’”

Things may never be perfect. Issues may continue, but standards can change through active, civic bargaining, they added.

“Everyone gets sick when they’re growing up,” Manville said, “but the strong and healthy bounce back.”