In 1776, Thomas Paine set a revolutionary tone rejecting the King: “But where, say some, is the King of America? … as far as we approve of monarchy… in America the law is king.”
The American Revolution replaced the authority of a sovereign with the authority of a written Constitution and a people who govern themselves. Paine’s vision was the bedrock of the American Revolution, a declaration that no person — not a king, not a president, not a general — would stand above the law.
Today, nearly 250 years later, that vision is dimming, not because the words have faded, but because the institutions meant to uphold them have withered. And at the heart of this erosion is a truth too many fear to speak: we are witnessing the collapse of the implicit moral principles of the Declaration, the American promise of liberty under law.
The conduct of America’s current chief executive recalls the cadence of the usurpations of George III, iterated in the July 4, 1776, Declaration of Independence. We have arrived at a George III moment.
Hellbound and Down 