No King
“In a free society, all are involved in what some are doing. Some are guilty; all are responsible.”
- Abraham Joshual Heschel (quoted by M. Gessen in “How to Be a Good Citizen When Your Country Does Bad Things”)
We all know the Declaration of Independence. It’s the founding document of our nation, which declared, 249 years ago, that this country would have no king.
Written primarily by Thomas Jefferson, the Declaration is a document of three parts:
The first is an inspiring introduction with perhaps the most memorable sentence in our history: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
The equally rousing third part is the declaration itself: “We, therefore, the representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states.” It ends with the 56 signers pledging “to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.” They were not signing some random petition; they knew if they failed they would lose all three.
The second part is a long list of grievances that almost nobody reads. But earlier this week, in a class I am giving called “The Soul of America,” we actually read the list – and were stunned by how eerily it reverberates today. From ignoring laws and keeping standing armies in our midst to imposing tariffs and making the military superior to civil authority to depriving us of trial by jury to deporting us to foreign countries, it reads like an 18th-century playbook for the Trump administration.
I had long thought that “No Kings” was a silly name for the weekly protests against tyranny, just more fodder for Trump’s limitless appetite for self-aggrandizement. Now it seems particularly apt.
Here is an abridged list of grievances the signers enumerated in the Declaration of Independence:
The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected.
He has endeavored to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners.
He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to the civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us;
For protecting them, by a mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states;
For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world;
For imposing taxes on us without our consent;
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury;
For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offences.
He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us.
In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms. Our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." George Santayana.