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This Saturday, October 18th, “No Kings” rallies [ [link removed] ] will again be held across the country — with ten cities in Louisiana alone joining in. Yet instead of celebrating this proud exercise of free speech, Speaker Mike Johnson and Congressman Steve Scalise have dismissed the movement as a “hate America rally.” Perhaps they should look in the mirror.
The last “No Kings” demonstrations earlier this year were among the largest peaceful protests in U.S. history. Between four and six million people gathered in more than two thousand cities and towns across the country, united by one simple message: no one man should ever rule over a free people. They weren’t angry mobs or fringe extremists. They were teachers, veterans, nurses, clergy, and families standing together under the same flag. That’s not “hating America.” That’s America itself.
Protest is one of the oldest and most patriotic traditions we have. It’s how we’ve moved this country forward—from ending slavery to winning women’s suffrage, from the labor and civil rights movements to the fight against unjust wars. The First Amendment wasn’t written for the comfortable or the complacent—it was written to protect those willing to challenge power.
The spirit behind “No Kings” is the spirit of the Founders themselves. George Washington understood the danger of power better than anyone. When the Revolution ended, some of his officers urged him to seize control and crown himself king. He refused. A few years later, when he voluntarily stepped down after two presidential terms, King George III reportedly said, “If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world.” Washington proved that true greatness lies in restraint, not domination.
He also believed that the right to speak freely and criticize authority was essential to preserving liberty. “If men are to be precluded from offering their sentiments on a matter,” Washington warned, “the freedom of speech may be taken away, and dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep, to the slaughter.” His farewell address would echo that same fear: “Cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people.”
James Madison, the architect of our Constitution, built checks and balances precisely to stop such a man from emerging. “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands,” he wrote, “may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” His solution was as practical as it was brilliant: “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition,” so that no branch of government could ever swallow the others.
Thomas Jefferson warned that “the natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground,” insisting that dissent was not disloyalty, but duty. During the presidency of John Adams, when the government began jailing critics under the Alien and Sedition Acts, Jefferson wrote to Madison that “a single, consolidated government becomes the most corrupt government on earth.” He believed decentralization and democracy were not weaknesses, but the only true guardrails against monarchy reborn under new clothes.
Alexander Hamilton, who often favored a strong executive, also issued one of the most chilling warnings of the era. “A man unprincipled in private life, desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper, despotic in his ordinary demeanor, known to have scoffed in private at the principles of liberty, may one day mount the hobby horse of popularity and sway the people with the torrent of his passions.” Even as he defended the need for executive energy, Hamilton reminded Americans that unlike the British king, “The President of the United States would be an officer elected for four years.” Temporary. Limited. Replaceable. That was the whole point.
Benjamin Franklin, ever the realist, summarized the entire American experiment in one line as he left the Constitutional Convention: “A republic, if you can keep it.” John Adams would later warn that “there never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” Both understood that America’s survival would depend not on force, but on character—on citizens who valued principle over personality.
Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns [ [link removed] ], whose work [ [link removed] ] has captured the soul of America from The Civil War to The Vietnam War, has said the Founders would not be surprised by someone like Donald Trump—they predicted him. What would shock them, Burns believes, is Congress’s willingness to surrender its power to him. The legislative branch was meant to be the people’s shield against tyranny, not the hand that opens the door. Burns’s upcoming film [ [link removed] ] on the founding era could not come at a better time. He reminds us that America’s survival depends on our ability to rekindle, as Lincoln put it, “the better angels of our nature.”
So let me ask this plainly: which is truly un-American—a peaceful protest defending our Republic from a man who seeks to rule it, or a congressman breaking his oath to help that man seize it?
Because “No Kings” isn’t a threat to America. It’s a reminder of who we are.
Perform your American duty and attend a No Kings event near you this Saturday Oct 18th (and bring your American Flag). Click the city for details and sign up: Lake Charles [ [link removed] ], Lafayette [ [link removed] ], Baton Rouge [ [link removed] ], New Orleans [ [link removed] ], Hammond [ [link removed] ], Alexandria [ [link removed] ], Leesville [ [link removed] ], Monroe [ [link removed] ], Ruston [ [link removed] ], Shreveport-Bossier [ [link removed] ]
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