As America marks its semiquincentennial, it’s a time to reflect on 250 years of democracy, jump-started by the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776.
America celebrates Independence Day every year with parades and fireworks, but the real work of democracy is an infinite grind that has played out for more than 90,000 days.
Three Arizona State University experts shared their thoughts on the evolution of democracy: past, present and future.
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Vibrant debate
James Hrdlicka, associate teaching professor in the School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies, studies state constitutions. His book, “Federal Empire: Constitution Making in Revolutionary America,” is about to be released.
Hrdlicka encourages people to see the creation of American democracy beyond the founders.
“There’s a kind of aura around the U.S. Constitution because it’s been amended only 27 times. We have this image of 55 guys in Philadelphia in December 1787 writing this document, and they’re sort of uniquely endowed with wisdom, and it’s responsible for future American greatness.
“Obviously the U.S. Constitution is very important, but it’s part of a constellation of constitutional documents, mechanisms and participation that really does encompass a much larger proportion of Americans.”
Hrdlicka’s book focuses on Massachusetts, whose state constitution process laid important groundwork. They had a dedicated convention and viewed ratification as the path to legitimacy.
“These are 18th-century governments. They don’t have some kind of coercive police force behind them, so overall, a system needs a high degree of legitimacy behind it,” he said.
In 1787 and 1788, all the states had conventions to ratify the U.S. Constitution.
“That’s where you see these great debates about the merits or demerits of the U.S. Constitution. It’s not a rubber stamp, and that’s meaningful.
“If you have a vibrant debate, and even if a vote is relatively close, all of the participants have basically acknowledged the legitimacy of the process,” he said.
State constitutions have always been fluid.
“Throughout the 19th century was the heyday of this, where you’d have a state convention and you’d scrap the state constitution completely,” he said.
The U.S. Constitution can be amended, but James Madison was not a fan.
“He took a starring role in drafting the document and, understandably, he was a little reticent to chuck the whole thing or be cavalier about it. He came down on the side that it’s good for constitutions to remain intact for a long time.”
Thomas Jefferson differed.
“He famously said that every generation should be able to write its own constitution if it wants to, because he has this sort of elaborate philosophical argument that if government is based on consent and if all the people who wrote the Constitution or approved it are dead, well, who consented to it? So logically, you should be entitled to write a new constitution if you want to.”
Disillusionment among Millennials
While the founding documents needed buy-in from a majority of the people, that kind of consensus seems harder to come by today.
Stella Rouse, director of the Hispanic Research Center and professor in the School of Politics and Global Studies, studies how identities inform political behavior, attitudes and representation, including Latino, African American, gender and generational identities.
“Our Founding Fathers never imagined the country to be 350 million people,” she said.
“What makes America great is different to different people, and I think that’s very salient in the context of the 250th anniversary of the country when we think about how far we have come and perhaps some backtracking that we are doing.”
Rouse and her colleagues have found disillusionment among young people.
“They’ve grown up at a time when all they’ve seen is gridlock in Congress, and oftentimes, Congress and the president not getting along. They don’t remember a time when bipartisanship was seen as a positive quality, and people compromising to get things done, which is the way our Founding Fathers intended,” said Rouse, who’s co-authored two books on Millennials and politics.
“They’re caught in this, ‘We don’t like the political parties. We don’t like the political system. We’re very disenchanted.’”
Millennials were the first generation to be worse off than their parents, Rouse said.
“In the history of our country, every subsequent generation has been better off financially. Generation Z is also in that boat,” she said.
“And my biggest fear is that it’s not the partisanship but the class divide between the haves and have nots. If it continues to be the case, I think we’re going to have not only a generational but a class divide that we may not be able to come back from.”
But Rouse is not entirely pessimistic.
“I think it’s very important to have that long, long perspective of 250 years and the things that have been accomplished in those 250 years. I think the ideals of what this country was founded on and what it’s meant to be for everyone — I’ve seen data that shows, and I certainly want to believe, that most people hold on to those ideals.
Rejuvenating civic education
Paul Carrese, founding director and professor of the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership, believes the semiquincentennial should be celebrated for at least the next 15 years.
“Our civic culture is fracturing. A lot of American citizens are sort of checked out of politics. Measures of patriotism or civic affection are pretty low. And in the younger generations, you know, 35 and younger, they’re very, very low.
“So because of that, both on the civic education side and then repairing our civic culture, I think we should think about 2026 as the first year of a two-decade period of civic commemoration, including a lot of civic discussion and debates and civic education opportunity through at least 2041, because that would mark 1791, the ratification of the Bill of Rights.”
His book, “Teaching America,” released in May, explores the decline of civic education, which started eroding decades ago, he said. After the Cold War, there was a shift in spending and prioritization toward STEM subjects in the interest of national security.
More recently, political polarization has come into play.
“Within academia in the past five to seven years, a very contentious set of debates arose about what America means and how to teach about America and American history.”
But higher education can play a critical role in restoring civic education. One of the sources in Carrese’s book is Ronald Daniels, the president of Johns Hopkins University, who spoke at an ASU event in 2023. He wrote a book in 2021 called “What Universities Owe Democracy” in which he argues that higher education institutions must recruit faculty for citizenship education.
“This is not an ideological project. It’s trying to rise above that and say, ‘What are consensus efforts we can make to repair and restore civic education?’”
The School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership is one solution, he said. The first academic department of its kind when it was founded in 2017, the nonpartisan, transdisciplinary school has inspired similar entities in higher education, including at the University of North Carolina and the University of Texas.
“So it’s something of a reform effort that has gained some national traction,” he said.
The country has been through other dark, fractured political periods, like the Civil War and the Vietnam protests, Carrese said. But technology, including social media and AI, are complicating the challenges.
Americans need to realize that patriotism is not partisan, he said.
“There’s a very long tradition in America of patriotism, meaning gratitude with discussion, debate, disagreements.
“The term ‘reflective patriotism’ comes from Alexis de Tocqueville in ‘Democracy in America’ in the 1830s, noticing that Americans have this distinctive kind of patriotism that blends the emotional gratitude part with the debate, the disagreement, not just about policy, but about the meaning of America.”
