There is, I believe, a long period, measured not in centuries but in millennia—between the earliest appearance of states and lasting until perhaps only four centuries ago—that might be called a “golden age for barbarians” and for nonstate peoples in general. For much of this long epoch, the political enclosure movement represented by the modern

centuries-old institutions are increasingly inadequate for confronting ascendant authoritarians. Merely defending a certain sort of democracy is no way to help democracy as an ideal.

Anne Applebaum’s Twilight of Democracy is another deeply instructive study of the illiberal drift of so many democracies across the globe.3 However, like so many others, Applebaum’s view proceeds from a default assumption that democracy is a discrete system. But that assumption prevents us from understanding democracy as a constantly evolving

Frontiers can be envisioned as peaceful trade zones where valuables are exchanged for the mutual benefit of both sides, with economic need preventing overt hostilities, or as places where distrust is magnified by cultural misunderstandings, negative stereotypes, and the absence of bridging institutions.