In September 1787, an onlooker is said to have asked Benjamin Franklin what kind of government he and the other delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia’s Independence Hall had given the United States. “A republic,” he replied, “if you can keep it.” Can we still keep it? That’s the question at the heart of Tom Nichols’ provocative new book Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assault from Within on Modern Democracy. Nichols, a professor at the United States Naval College, joins Geoff Kabaservice to discuss how responsibility for our eroding democracy ultimately rests with America’s citizens themselves.

Nichols ticks off the factors that, in his view, have made American democracy increasingly unsustainable: citizens’ willingness to embrace illiberalism and conspiracy theories, the ingrained culture of complaint and its corresponding neglect of civic virtues and civic responsibilities, the degradation of public life and public service, and the social atomization that accompanies the spread of social media. At the same time, he cautions against the dangers of nostalgia for a bygone era of American greatness that never really existed, at least not as many Americans choose to selectively remember it. And while Nichols worries about the ways that the dystopic novels Brave New World and 1984 are coming to fruition in today’s America, he also offers hope that Americans can bridge a widening civil-military gap and shore up the foundations of democracy through collective action.

Nichols quotes Abraham Lincoln’s warning that “If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher.” The threat to American democracy over the next few years, in his view, comes not only from populist Republicans' inclinations toward authoritarianism but from Democrats’ failure to respond seriously to the reality that “we are in an existential crisis of government that requires an emergency response from a broad coalition of pro-democracy voters.” His message comes as a rallying cry to both center-left and center-right to recognize the dangers that confront us and respond accordingly.

Photo by Samuel Branch on Unsplash.