In recent months, across public squares and online platforms, a short, sharp slogan has taken root: “No kings.” It’s been chanted at protests, scrawled on banners, and hashtagged by citizens frustrated with what they see as the consolidation of unaccountable power — whether in the executive branch, corporate boardrooms, or political dynasties.
To some, it sounds like mere populist anger. But in truth, “no kings” is anything but new. It echoes a tradition that reaches back not just to 1776, but to 1215, when a group of English barons forced King John to sign a radical document called the Magna Carta. That charter planted the idea — revolutionary for its time — that even monarchs must obey the law.
From that seed grew a transatlantic political culture grounded in limits on power, due process, and the consent of the governed. When English monarchs violated those principles in the 17th century, Parliament pushed back, culminating in the English Civil War and the Bill of Rights of 1689 — a declaration that power belongs not to kings, but to the people.
The American colonists carried this torch across the ocean. By 1776, they had had enough of King George III’s taxes, redcoats and refusal to acknowledge colonial rights.
In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson laid out a philosophy that still resonates today: Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, and when they fail, the people have a right to alter or abolish them.
That’s the context in which we must understand today’s unrest. “No kings” is not a rejection of order or democracy. It is a rejection of unchecked power — wherever it lives. It’s a call to uphold the principle that no one — not a president, a billionaire, or a tech CEO — is above the law or immune from accountability.
It’s no coincidence that this resurgence comes at a moment when executive actions bypass legislative processes, when influence can be bought with campaign dollars, and when certain families seem to dominate politics generation after generation. To many Americans, this doesn’t look like a republic anymore — it looks like a court with courtiers.
“No kings” is not anarchy. It is Anglo-American constitutionalism in its purest form. It is the voice of citizens insisting, just as the barons did at Runnymede, and the founders did in Philadelphia, that power must serve liberty — or be restrained.
This protest isn’t just modern. It’s ancient. And it’s overdue.
Lenley Hensarling
Heber City