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No Kings, No Grassroots, No Introspection
By John F. Di Leo
Oct. 19, 2025
On October 18, the un-American left held countless demonstrations across the country (allegedly about 2,500 of them), ranging from harmless picket lines to riotous violence.
The theme? “No Kings” — a declaration that America doesn’t believe in autocrats, and that here in America, politicians are not above the law.
It’s a theme as old as civilization. Some 2,500 years ago, during the days of Etruscan rule in ancient Rome, the infamous Rape of Lucretia so infuriated the people of Rome that they declared an end to the rule of kings, once and for all, driving the Tarquin family out of the city and establishing a republic on the spot.
From the overthrow of Tarquin the Proud in 509 B.C., then, the war cry of “No Kings!” has enjoyed a long and respectable pedigree as the fundamental “republican” (small r) war cry.
It’s short and sweet; it fits nicely on a picket sign — and in English, at least, chants come easy, since so many words rhyme with “kings.” But how much real meaning is there beneath the chants?
In theory, the cry of “No Kings!” indicates a refusal to tolerate dictatorship. But how long did that really last, historically speaking? When that cabal of homicidal Roman senators assassinated Julius Caesar in 44 B.C., their justification was, famously, that “He was trying to be king!”
But as students of antiquity all know, the Roman republic had ceased to be truly republican over a century earlier, and even before that, it was a form of government that we today would hardly recognize as elective in any form. The Roman Senate frequently appointed dictators for short terms, and by the late 2nd century B.C., Roman generals realized that they could just appoint themselves dictator, without the Senate’s blessing, for as long as they wanted, if they were popular enough with their troops.
Most famously, first Marius, and then Sulla completely broke the idea of a republic, but even after generations of dictatorial rule, the “No Kings!” war chant still inspired Caesar’s rivals enough that they thought the chant would justify them in the eyes of the public. Casca, Cassius, Bucilanius, Decimus, and of course Brutus were among the 60 senators who participated in history’s most famous murder.
Much like a century earlier, when groups of senators decided that the Gracchi — two Tribunes of the Plebs, Tiberius and then his brother Gaius — needed to be removed from the scene, the senators had used the same claim. These guys are trying to be king, they told themselves, so we must kill them. And so the Senate did, as violently as possible. When Casca et al. decided to terminate the rule of Julius Caesar, they had precedent.
Two millennia later, the Democrats of the United States apply the same basis. However violent the action, they can claim they are defending the United States from the rule of kings. Remember when Democrat activist John Wilkes Booth murdered President Abraham Lincoln, the nation’s first Republican president, and shouted out “Sic Semper Tyrannus!”? To their mindset, the accusation that their victim is trying to be a king is sufficient justification for violence.
What students of ancient Rome learn is that the Romans’ so-called republic, their periods of dictatorship, and certainly their five hundred years of emperors were all much more violent than their lives had ever been under the kings.
The ancient Romans — had they been capable of introspection (some were, but not many, apparently) — might indeed have realized that they were freer and safer under kings than under any other form of government they tried.
All of this leads us to the logical question today: If we were capable of being honest with ourselves, would we be better off under kings today, or in the so-called republics that rule most of the West?
France has no king. But the French had an election last year in which their populist party, known as National Rally, was predicted to do well, so the rival establishment parties (the Socialists, the Greens, the Republicans, etc.) banded together to freeze the National Rally out of the government. Clever, but hardly a republican move.
Germany has no king. But the Germans know that their populist party, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), is doing better and better in every election. Seven AfD candidates died in the weeks leading up to this September’s local elections, an unusually high, and statistically significant, number of deaths among candidates with an election coming up. It’s too early to be sure how many of these, if any, were assassinations, of course. Let’s just say it’s suspicious.
The United Kingdom has a king, but he doesn’t play a role in politics, so the U.K. may as well be viewed as a simple republic like the others. And how are Britons’ elections going? Well, with the U.K.’s populist party, Reform U.K., climbing higher and higher in the polls, the British establishment parties — Labor, the LibDems, and the Tories — have been acting like a uniparty of late, illegally postponing all the 2025 elections that Reform U.K. was expected to win. This is illegally extending the four-year terms of numerous mayors and city councils to five or even six years. With what justification? None. Just simple fiat. The U.K. establishment is choosing where to allow elections and where not to, choosing to extend the terms of their allies and thwart the will of the public wherever polling indicated that the public might disagree with the powers that be.
There are plenty of other countries worth looking into — Brazil's illegal prosecutions of their past president, Canada’s malevolent torment of truckers who had the audacity to protest illegal mandates, and on and on. The list is long, but the point is made. The absence of a king is no guarantee of freedom, security, or the protection of election rights.
In fact, take a look at the picket signs scattered across Saturday’s demonstrations. When we look at the positions of the people participating in these “No Kings!” rallies today, we see a rather undemocratic array of positions advocated by these alleged supporters of democracy, to put it mildly.
These demonstrators call for the kangaroo court persecution of a popularly elected president. They call for taxpayer-funded abortion on demand, the killing of a million innocents per year. They call for the destruction of Israel and the endorsement of sharia law here at home. They call for open borders, the dilution of American voting rights by millions of people per year. They call for the permanent empowerment of an unelected bureaucracy, immune to firing by the people’s elected government. They call for the defunding of both federal law enforcement and local police forces in order to turn over our neighborhoods entirely to the hands of the criminal element.
President Trump is no king. A tyrannical king wouldn’t permit rallies like this to take place, and anyone capable of even a morsel of introspection would see the fundamental flaw in this expensive and vulgar performance art. But introspection is just one more of the countless talents that these flawed amateur political scientists never learned at school.
John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based international transportation manager, trade compliance trainer, and speaker. Read his book on the surprisingly numerous varieties of vote fraud (The Tales of Little Pavel), his political satires on the Biden-Harris years (Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volumes I, II, and III), and his recent collection of public policy essays, Current Events and the Issues of Our Age, all available in eBook or paperback, exclusively on Amazon.
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From American Thinker
Link:
https://www.americanthinker.com/arti...ospection.html
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