The Most Powerful Idea
The No Kings Movement is a patriotic movement. The flags, the revolutionary cosplay, and the creative signs that say ‘We The People’ or ‘No Kings, No Tyranny’ are all invocations of our historical legacy. It has organically decided in a thousand places at once to make a call for courage and sacrifice in service to a higher principle.
That said, as we wave the flag and sing our songs—our nation was built on a foul compromise made between liberal intellectuals who held their noses and slaveowners who talked a good game about liberty while they kept an entire group of human beings in bondage and servitude. It’s a painful hypocrisy that is baked into our founding and haunts us still.
It’s a painful thing for someone who loves their country to look at our history and reconcile with it, but politics is downwind of culture. Something is rotten in that culture when every generation is forced into an existential struggle over whether this other group of people get the rights that they are entitled to under our Constitution, and by basic moral sense. This is ultimately the struggle we are now in. White supremacy and male supremacy are the handmaidens to facism. While I do not believe these are America’s defining characteristics, it is a cultural force with which we must contend.
There is a temptation to ignore this inconvenient truth, or pretend that we are now fully absolved of our past, especially if you consider yourself a patriot—as we at Mass 50501 do. This is the trap the nationalists always fall into, and it’s one of the social forces driving the other side of this struggle. Americans are optimistic and proud people, and these are traits that make us great. But when that pride turns to hubris, the optimism can be drained through that hole in our character. Eventually to protect an identity against uncomfortable questions people can become nihilistic or self-deceitful. A real patriot should be intellectually and morally honest about our sordid history. We should understand the social forces that operate within our democratic system that, from time to time, threaten to destabilize it.
The moral errors in our Constitution set the stage for these struggles, but the Founders knew this moment would come and they left us the tools we need to combat this perennial evil. There is an aspiration, murky and philosophical at its core, that when mustered can bring forth a wave of reform like a tsunami. We do have within our power the capacity for good, justice, a freer society, and a more perfect union. It is upon that basis that we should apply our love of country—without lies and without the salt of stigma rubbed into and aggravating the wound on our collective soul.
In the 16th and 17th centuries, the European empires colonized the world and subjected numerous peoples to domination. As kings sought to expand their domains, in commerce, there was a rising merchant class—not titled, but educated and made wealthy through the booming trade in commodities. This new merchant class chafed at the restrictions placed upon them by landed aristocracy. They began to view the monarchy’s claim to rule by divine right as illegitimate. While these traders agitated against the strictures placed on their activities, there was also rising scientific awareness and the birthing of a new academic middle class that analyzed society with tools of reason and sought to solve our most pressing problems. Scholars, scientists, and philosophers of great renown were sought after by monarchy, nobility, and these new merchant princes for their insight and advice on the issues of the day.
These twin forces slowly changed the face of Europe. Wealthy donors would financially support artistic and scientific projects. The arts inspired people to imagine a better future. Scientific discoveries catalyzed rising living standards and an increase in general prosperity and opportunities, which increased the number of people participating in these new economies, and with them the development of new ideas about everything. These were European centuries defined both by a ravenous imperialism and sometimes antagonistic liberalizing forces. Soon the intellectual drivers of this movement began to think about government, applying the same tools of meritocracy and reason that worked within artistic, scientific, and commercial domains. This movement was called the Enlightenment.
A century later, at the time of our country’s founding, the intellectual, military, and commercial elite of American society were educated in Greek, Roman, and this new European Enlightenment philosophy. Having found themselves in conflict with a king, and with a people behind them who had turned so violently against the rule of the Monarchy—the Founders applied the philosophy of the Enlightenment to the problem of government and sought to create a republic—modeled on the Roman Republic. The Romans had a crude version of this in their founding documents, something they called ‘Checks through Rivalry.’ The American construction was more elaborate and thoughtful, inspired by both the Romans and by Enlightenment insights about natural rights, independent courts, division of power, and checks and balances.
Original Art by Kate F.
The Declaration of Independence has a preamble: 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. This famous quotation is a distillation of the treatises of John Locke, an English political theorist from the 17th century who is sometimes referred to as the “Father of Liberalism.” The central tenet of liberal and Enlightenment political thought was that people are endowed with inalienable rights—natural rights that exist by birth, and not through mandate by kings. Knowledge and justice should therefore be created only by human reason and human labor.
These ideas took time to hone and put into practice. The U.S. Constitution, which more fully embodied Enlightenment principles, was drafted a few years after the revolution that allowed for its creation. In 1788, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay published a set of essays meant to persuade the people of New York to ratify the brand-new U.S. Constitution. These Federalist Papers were a cogent description of concepts such as rule of law, natural rights, consent of the governed, checks and balances, and the separation of powers—meant to be consumed and understood by common people.
It was theorized that it was possible to create a government that could imitate the process of self-correction that the scientific method enabled in the sciences, or that free market economics did in commerce. The bold proposition was that through debate, introspection, revision, and testing of ideas against a voting public with conflicting interests, it was possible to produce better leaders, better economies, and better nations. Our country’s creation was dubbed the American Experiment because most people, including some of the Founders, had doubts that a people governing themselves could be done. America was a product of the Enlightenment.
A decade later, revolutionary forces removed King Louis XVI and created the first French republic. They were inspired by our own revolution. French papers often declared, “liberté, égalité, fraternité,” (liberty, equality, fraternity). Despite the revolutionaries’ goals, chaos and terror followed in the wake of King Louis XVI’s removal, which facilitated the rise of Napoleon. Nevertheless, the power of these ideas still ended a long-standing monarchy, and after Napoleon's brief reign, a proper French Republic along Enlightenment ideals was founded.
While most nations did not remove their monarchies with violence, as the U.S. and French revolutions did, many monarchs began to respond to political pressure from the public. They started to provide services like public benefits, allowed for independent courts, and made other reforms that were meant to protect the rights of citizens. For example, after the U.S. defeated Great Britain in the War of 1812, the U.K. instituted their own reforms: Their monarchy was severely limited in its power and reduced to a ceremonial office under pressure from revolutionary forces as a liberty-loving fervor swept across the United Kingdom.
After the second World War, the lines of scrimmage between the liberal world and the old world of empires moved east and bisected Germany. After the Cold War and the falling of the Iron Curtain, the lines moved again. In the centuries after, the rules-based liberal order has spread across oceans both east and west. Large chunks of the planet's population entered into an uneven but persistent pattern of growth in education, health, and material improvements in the standard of living—all of it was anchored on the principles of reason, freedom of expression, human dignity, and natural rights.
When rules are created from the perspective of constraints that are placed on government, if you allow the people liberty, you unlock all of the people's potential in a way that no government is capable of determining. Scientific potential is unshackled when people are free to explore ideas. The power of competitive markets (which we are also at risk of losing) ensures lower prices, jobs, and products for every need while also allowing for the efficient allocation of labor, resources and capital that can be spent on innovation and growth. The protections for individual liberty give people a sense of security—they do not need to worry as much about the state coming down on them for sharing an unpopular view, or making the wrong enemy in the public square.
The political systems of liberal nations often start quite unstable, depending on the state they are in when the government is created, but they often slowly become more durable and resilient. Power changes hands not in violence but with elections. As attitudes change, the systems of society can flex and stress without breaking. A program may be discontinued because it no longer works, or a new one might be created to solve a problem. Taxes go up or down, but in general, they reflect the priorities of the people rather than the whims of monarchs and oligarchs—if the system is functioning properly. These solutions are legitimized indirectly through elections and though someone has to lose an election, there is at least a sense that opposing voices were heard and considered.
These principles found their birthplace but a few hours drive from most of you. The hallowed ground of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts was the cradle of a revolution based on ideas—ideas that birthed a nation and ignited revolution around the world. That is the power of aspiration and ideals. A nation can win a war and change its borders a bit, but an ideal can change the character of a nation and create new mythologies to anchor the nation’s character.
Small ‘l’ liberal governments are not perfect, and they are entirely capable of the full range of horrors that autocratic ones are. We have committed our fair share of sins. There is still crime, crisis, and all the evils of human ignorance, and we are no better or worse than any other people. Being a liberal nation does not protect us from these things. But correctly designed and supported, a national ideology that holds sacred those basic liberal principles has more mechanisms for the discovery of truth than its autocratic competitors.
The founders expected and anticipated these kinds of problems. They were visionaries, but they were not utopians. Emmanuel Kant, an early Enlightenment philosopher from Germany, whose work informed the creation of powerful cognitive tools like the Scientific Method, once noted that, “Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.” Our system was built on the assumption of human stupidity, greed, and evil as a given and constant throughout time.
Frederick Douglass said during a time of tumult and chaos in America much like today: “The best friend of a nation is he who most faithfully rebukes her for her sins—and he her worst enemy who, under the specious … garb of patriotism seeks to excuse, palliate, and defend them.” The abolitionist movement was ultimately successful in their goal, though at a great and terrible cost. Douglass had reason to be ambivalent about America, but he came to embrace its promise. The movement he helped lead centered a new form of patriotism based on the country's founding principles. These principles were invoked during the suffrage movement to great effect. They were also used during the Civil Rights movement.
An idealistic foundation gives us a moral argument that is irrefutable. Those great movements of history from which we draw wisdom have time and time again found these old arguments lying unused on a dusty shelf. Then they use it to activate the latent culture and identity of America and rally the people to the cause of liberty. Patriotism is sometimes a shield to defend ideas that are long past their expiration date, and it’s always a tragedy when this happens. But it can also be a sword reforged from old iron, ready to be used when the entire nation cries for justice. The No Kings Movement is a cry for justice, and it is embracing a fierce, humane, unyielding patriotism as its enduring and most memorable quality.
The most powerful idea in human history is laying there—on a dusty shelf from years of neglect. All we need to do is use it. This nation’s symbols, honor, and ideals are ours to reclaim—if we have the courage to take them.
Bryan Winter can be reached via Bluesky (@savingtherepublic.bsky.social) and Facebook.
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