None of us—not even Peter Thiel—will live to be 250. But the polities we create can last a very long time, if they do not expire in their infancy.
In 2026, the United States will celebrate a quarter of a millennium since the Declaration of Independence. Many people since Donald Trump’s return to power have taken to worrying that it will not last much longer. “I think this is how a republic dies,” Andrew Sullivan wrote back in August. Substack probably runs one essay a day on this theme. A month later, Zack Beauchamp gave us “This Is How Trump Ends Democracy,” an essay notable for the sentence “Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension . . . has shown us how authoritarianism can come to America.” He added, in the style of an indignant teenager: “I mean this literally.”
I have argued elsewhere why I continue to regard such fears as hyperbolic. But how surprising would it be if the American republic really did die on our watch? To address that question, it helps to know something about the history of republics.
