Be an American and Resist
Ten days into the new year—a year of promise and protest—Thomas Paine set America ablaze. Released on Wednesday, January 10, 1776, Common Sense would go on to sell some 120,000 copies in just three months.
The pamphlet’s central message was this: “But where, say some, is the King of America? I’ll tell you, friend, he reigns above, and doth not make havoc of mankind like the Royal Brute of Great Britain.”
Paine’s point? “For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other.”
By July 1776, the war for independence had been waging for more than a year since the morning dew witnessed “the shot heard around the world” in Lexington and Concord in April 1775.
When the Declaration of Independence was written, adopted, and published, the language of resistance had become clearer than ever. In a now-forgotten line near the end of the document, read the words, “A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.”
Months earlier, in May, the Whig minister Samuel West preached a sermon titled “On the Right to Rebel Against Governors.” In it, he said, “Let us treat our rulers with all that honor and respect which the dignity of their station requires. But let it be such an honor and respect as is worthy of the sons of freedom to give.”
At a time when the Royal Brute of Mar-a-Lago defaces the White House to stroke his ego, lies proudly and stokes division boldly, ignores laws and attacks the system, flatters the oppressor and assails the oppressed, and plunges America ever deeper into a crisis of conscience, the withholding of a certain degree of honor and respect is necessary to remind him just who he is supposed to be in our democracy—not a king, not a tyrant, but a servant of we the people and a champion of the American ideals.
“Power concedes nothing without a demand,” Frederick Douglass said. “It never did and it never will.”
Today, tomorrow, and for as long as it takes, be an American and resist.
if your desire is to be factually, correct why do you call it a democracy instead of a constitutional republic?