“No Kings” Needs Locke, Not the Guillotine

On June 14, protesters gathered in cities across the country under a bold banner: “No Kings.” They marched again under that same cry two weeks later, and rallied again in some cities on July 4. The slogan is intended as a rebuke to what they perceive as a creeping authoritarianism in American politics, particularly directed at President Trump, whose critics accuse him of cultivating a “regal presidency.” Whatever the merits of those charges may be, the imagery accompanying these protests—mannequin heads in French wigs, toy guillotines, and revolutionary theater—evokes not America in 1776, but France in 1793.

It’s powerful symbolism, but the progressive Left has chosen the wrong revolution to celebrate. On July 4, 1776, America did indeed declare, in effect, “No Kings.” But the revolution that followed lacked the radical aims of the later Jacobins. Our Founders were altogether more restrained and philosophical, and therefore their project has been far more enduring. They may have fought a war to defend their rights, but unlike the French Revolution, they never let loose violence and terror, which upended the social order altogether.

In part, the Founders’ moderation was a consequence of their deep-rootedness in the political thought of John Locke. The Englishman, writing almost a century before the American Revolution, held that the government’s sole purpose is to protect pre-existing natural rights: life, liberty, and property. When the government fails to do so, citizens have not only the right but the duty to withdraw their consent. The Declaration of Independence echoes this logic precisely: governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed,” and when they become destructive of those rights, “it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it.”

That is a protest against tyranny—but a protest grounded in order and principle, not chaos.

The current “No Kings” movement borrows more heavily from the French model than Anglo-American sources. In their Revolution, sovereignty was not a means of protecting rights, but of redefining them. Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s notion of the “general will” replaced individual conscience with collective conformity. The result, infamously, was not ordered liberty but the Reign of Terror—the new regime devoured its own children in the name of the people. Under Maximilien Robespierre, the “general will” justified mass executions of anyone who disagreed, often without trial.

John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau both began with the premise that government derives its legitimacy from the consent of the governed, but their paths diverged sharply from there. Locke believed that individuals possess natural rights—life, liberty, and property—that exist prior to government and must be protected by it. Rousseau, by contrast, held that rights are shaped and defined by the collective, and that true freedom comes only through submission to the “general will.” Where Locke saw the social contract as a safeguard for individual liberty, Rousseau saw it as a tool to forge civic unity, even at the expense of dissent. The result was two starkly different visions of freedom: one rooted in restraint, the other in control.

We still see echoes of this divergence in American politics today. In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez remarked, “I believe in our collective conscience. So, I don’t have any master plan, but I believe that the people will show me the way.” That sentiment may sound democratic in passing, but it reflects the Rousseauian idea that legitimacy flows not from principle or process, but from the mood of the crowd. Liberty is not secured by intuition or collective conscience—laws, institutions, and limits on power secure it. Unlike Rousseau and his statist heirs, our Founders understood that freedom cannot simply be redefined by a simple majority.

Today’s protestors may not call for literal guillotines, but their chosen symbols suggest a comfort with revolutionary excess. A movement claiming to resist authoritarianism ought to look more carefully in the mirror. In recent years, many of the same voices decrying executive power as “anti-democratic” had little objection when left-of-center Presidents Obama and Biden stretched that power in service of their own goals. The issue seems less about defending democracy than about discrediting any outcome or leader they happen to dislike. And that’s precisely the kind of arbitrary rule the American founders revolted against.

This is not to say that concern over concentrated executive power is unfounded. Conservatives raised similar alarms during the Obama years, just as progressives now object to Trump’s rhetoric. But what’s missing in today’s movement is consistency and humility.

In his 2014 book The Revolt of the Public, former CIA analyst Martin Gurri describes the rise of “Homo informaticus,” a hyper-connected citizenry whose first reflex is to negate. Armed with smartphones and social platforms, the public now wields a decentralized “no-power” that can topple reputations or derail policy within hours. Yet the angered mob rarely coalesces around durable, constructive programs. “Any untoward event,” Gurri warns, “can draw a networked public into the streets, calling for blood.”

The “No Kings” rallies exemplify that pattern: they film toy guillotines, place guillotines on signs and shirts, and lampoon an imperial presidency but offer no better architecture to replace it. In other words, twenty-first-century mobs achieve Rousseau’s instantaneous unanimity without enduring Rousseau’s committees of public safety; they magnify grievance while remaining institutionally weightless. Unless channeled by structural guardrails—such as the ballots, bicameralism, and federalism prized by our Madisonian system—this digital negation risks repeating the French cycle of demolition without design.

History offers a cautionary preview: two late-eighteenth-century revolutions unleashed popular fury, yet only one translated it into lasting liberty. The American Revolution, though born of conflict, was fundamentally constructive. It produced a written constitution, institutional checks and balances, and a governing structure designed to preserve liberty by limiting power. The French Revolution, by contrast, tore down institutions without building durable replacements. In place of monarchy, it elevated committees, cults, and mobs—all in the name of virtue and the people. The American Founders pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to establish a republic of laws. The Jacobins demanded blood to purify a society of enemies. One gave rise to ordered liberty. The other ended in the guillotine.

The genius of the American Revolution is that it said “No Kings” and “No Committees of Public Safety.” It distrusted concentrated power of every kind, placing checks and balances between the branches of government, and between the government and the people. That is why July 4 celebrates not just rebellion, but constitutionalism—a nation of laws, not of men.

It is fair, even noble, to oppose executive overreach. But the test of a protest movement is not only what it resists, but what it proposes in its place. The founders did not simply reject monarchy; they established a durable republic founded on natural rights and limited government.

If today’s “No Kings” movement wants to honor that legacy, it might revisit the source. Begin not with Rousseau and Robespierre, but with Locke and Madison—men who knew that liberty depends not on “general will,” but on ordered liberty.

The road of history is fraught with political movements driven by passion, unmoored from principle, that tended to crown tyrants. From Alcibiades, the self-serving populist of Athenian democracy, to Napoleon, to Fidel Castro, the crowd’s will has too often paved the road to centralized, unchecked power. America’s revolution was different because it did not just reject kings—it also rejected mobs. It chose a structure of liberty, not a spectacle of rage.

If we are serious about preventing either thrones or mobs, Congress could begin by reclaiming the authorities it has lazily ceded. Require explicit re-authorization of national emergencies after 90 days; regulate trade through Congressional action; mandate legislative approval for any regulation with a multi-billion-dollar impact; tighten the War Powers Resolution to force an up-or-down vote before extended deployments. Such acts would not suffocate executive energy, but they would re-anchor it to popular consent expressed through deliberation rather than acclamation—a thoroughly Locke-and-Madison remedy for twenty-first-century anxieties. That legacy is worth defending—not with guillotines, but with guardrails on governmental power.