As the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence approaches, celebrations will begin nationwide. Yet they arrive at a moment when warnings about the fate of our democracy grow louder and more urgent.

Each party accuses the other of plotting tyranny, rigging elections, and pushing the system to the brink. The parties make these claims with remarkable confidence and with no regard for the consequences.

I recently spoke to a group of business professionals. Afterward, a man asked, with genuine concern on his face, whether I could promise that American democracy would still be intact a couple of years from now.

I’ve been getting some variation of this question for the past few years.

I assured him that it would endure, my belief grounded in a long history of political parties warning about democracy’s demise.

The Federalists, for example, claimed Thomas Jefferson’s election would destroy the republic, painting him as a dangerous radical aligned with the bloodshed of the French Revolution. They claimed his victory would unleash mob rule and threaten property rights.

Jefferson supporters charged John Adams’ reelection would push the country toward aristocracy, even monarchy. Adams, they avowed, was a tyrant who had abandoned the democratic ideals of the Revolution.

Post-Civil War, Republicans asserted that Democrats extinguished any hope of a multiracial democracy. They pointed to the one-party Democratic South as “the death of republican government,” and blasted urban Democratic machines as corrupt vote-buying operations run by crooked political bosses.

Democrats countered that Republicans were the real danger to democracy, captured by greedy railroad barons and wealthy industrial monopolists. They condemned the GOP’s aggressive use of federal powers, using Reconstruction as a pretext to impose military rule, erode state rights and manipulate electoral outcomes.

In the 1930s, Republicans accused Franklin Roosevelt of authoritarian, even dictatorial, behaviors, while Democrats insisted that democracy’s very survival depended on the president’s New Deal reforms.

In the 1960s, Republicans argued that mass protests were tearing the political system apart. Democrats responded with their own crisis rhetoric, framing the Watergate scandal as evidence of democracy’s failure, the system crumbling under the weight of corruption.

From this vantage point, today’s alarm bells are just the latest entry in a rich tradition of casting political conflict as democratic collapse.

To be clear, this doesn’t mean that party concerns are baseless. It means those concerns are familiar and recurrent.

Parties evoke existential stakes because heightened urgency draws attention, which in turn mobilizes voters.

Their goal isn’t clarity. It’s anxiety.

So, it’s not surprising that Americans’ feel exhausted by politics and disillusioned with democracy.

Keep in mind, democracy’s never been a finished product. It’s always been a loud, messy battleground of competing ideas, always under pressure, and always evolving.

Since the Declaration, the country has endured wars, economic collapses, mass protests, and bitter partisan conflict. Our democracy has outlasted every wave of apocalyptic rhetoric and every passing politician.

It’s not collapsing. It’s just being pushed and challenged, the way it’s always been.

Accepting that reality lowers the temperature.

Enjoy the celebrations.

— Mark Joslyn is a professor of political science at the University of Kansas.