Do you despise Trump? Do you hate the policies he enacts? Do you despise unconstitutional and illegal actions? Then you would much rather he were King than President.
Americans are often misinformed about historical issues, and one issue that stands out above others is our misconceptions and confusion surrounding dictators, monarchs, and kings, as well as our own freedom.
Dictators are the law itself; they cannot disobey the law because the law either allows them to do as they will or they are often above it, able to alter it to meet their desires or to use military force to impose their will. This, I believe, is what protestors have in mind when they call Trump a king.
Calling him a dictator would fit much better, as men like Mao, Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, and many others turned into tyrants when they gained the backing of the majority and, instead of protecting the rights of the people, implemented their own whims and desires, removing millions of dissidents if need be to preserve power.
Vermont’s senior Senator Bernie Sanders sent out an interesting tweet referring to King George. He stated, “Americans believe in freedom, not authoritarianism. In 1776, brave Americans took on and defeated the most powerful despot in the world.” If this is the case, he should yearn to return to the days of King George and the monarchy. Our republic, which according to Senator Sanders has been a “democracy” since its inception (even though all the founders despised democracy and created a Republic) is massively more authoritarian than colonial rule was under King George. The king could not control nearly as much of our lives as the government does today. From a financial perspective, he imposed a modest 3% tax on tea, which was considered so oppressive that it led to a revolution.
So much for Sanders claiming modern Americans are despising authoritarianism!! Instead, we have long been embracing it. The patriots rebelling against King George III already lived a life of incomparably greater freedom than we do today.
If we go far back in history, we encounter “kings” who were simply members of their kindred, unlike the later monarchs, who could create laws and were the heads of the entire nation, ruling a geographic area. Kings then were tribal leaders. The English word for king is derived from kin, and a king was the head of his people. Unlike monarchs, kings were simply members of the tribe, burdened with the obligations and duties they owed to their people. Thomas Aquinas wrote that “People are not made for the prince, but the prince for the people.”
They were under the customs of the people, who delegated specific, limited powers to them. Kings could not create or manipulate law; the 13th-century jurist Henry de Bracton wrote, “The king himself must be, not under man, but under God and the law, because the law makes the king…for there is no king where arbitrary will dominates, and not the law.” Philosopher Bertrand de Jouvenel wrote, “A man of our time cannot conceive the lack of real power which characterized the medieval king.”
The rulers could not interfere with the rights of the people or manipulate them in any way. Historian Fritz Kern wrote, “The medieval State, as a mere institution for the preservation of the law, is not allowed to interfere for the benefit of the community with private rights.” Historian Régine Pernoud wrote a medieval king “possessed none of the attributes recognized as those of a sovereign power; he could neither decree general laws nor collect taxes on the whole of his kingdom nor levy an army.”
Many kings, even among the most powerful realms, were merely symbols of power. In 1016, a German prelate from the Kingdom of Burgundy stated, “The King has now nothing save his title and crown.” Feudal historian Marc Bloch declared France was “in practice almost without a King.” Historians Brian Tierney and Sidney Painter described him as “an almost powerless figurehead in the tenth century.”
Kings only controlled small sections of land, their own personal domains, and autonomous lords, churches, monasteries, local villages and towns, and areas of homesteads governed the rest of the realm. If Trump were truly king, his authority would extend to only a section of Maryland and perhaps into Northern Virginia; I think Senator Sanders would find that agreeable. The king’s authority in his own lands would be very libertarian, almost anarchistic, compared to modern America.
Sanders complains of authoritarianism under Trump, yet what placed Trump where he is, at the pinnacle of power? It was not a monarchy but a democracy that gave him (and other politicians like Sanders) the extensive power the latter is complaining of. Not only politicians but powerful non-elected capitalists like the Fords, Rockefellers, George Soros, Elon Musk, Dr Fauci, and others have far more financial and political power and influence than a medieval king did.
In other words, by advocating liberal democracy, Sanders has shot himself in the foot. He desired a powerful government to implement his socialist ideals, yet despised it when someone else seized that dangerous power. If he advocated for the return of a king, it would also provide him with the solution to his problem, a powerless figure who lacks the authority to do a tenth of Trump’s deeds.
