The Republic in Long-Term Perspective

Every system of government eventually passes away. That's a feature of the human condition. The United States has been an unusually stable polity by the standards of world civilizations, and for that stability Americans should be deeply grateful. But no nation is exempt from the basic forces of history. It is not reasonable to think that the constitutional republic we know will last forever. The question is when it will meet its end-in our lifetimes, or in our grandchildren's, or centuries later. Given the stable conditions that living Americans were socialized to expect, the dominant intuition is probably something like "A very long time from now, long enough that we can't imagine what life will be like then." That was my own confident view until recently, and it may still turn out to be right. But the recognition that no system of government lasts forever should make us realize that this one, too, will one day run its course. Once we face that reality, we can perhaps think with open minds about the possibility that the end will come sooner than we expected.