As organizations across the nation prepare for “No Kings Day” Saturday, it is appropriate to reflect on what’s really at stake for our great republic. One need only consider the example of Rome to understand the peril we face today.
From its founding, Rome was ruled by kings, many of them tyrannical and oppressive. Eventually, the Roman people decided enough was enough and rose up against one king, expelling him from Rome and abolishing the monarchy altogether. In its place would be a new form of society — the Res Publica (“the public thing”), or republic — one in which the people were sovereign. The civil powers of kingship were transferred to elected magistrates, while the king’s traditional religious functions were removed from the political sphere altogether.
The memory of kingly tyranny was seared into the Roman psyche. The early republic’s leaders, much like our own Founding Fathers, were cast as exemplars of civic and republican virtue. Having cast off the yoke, the Roman people refused to ever again submit to a king. Thus, aspiring to kingship became the one unforgivable ambition, with the very word for “king”, rex, becoming the bitterest political epithet.
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Rome’s republic would last for five centuries, only to succumb to a new tyranny under men we now call emperors — military dictators in all but name — whose authority stemmed from force, not the people. The Roman state would live on as the Roman Empire for many centuries, but Roman liberty was dead.
Yet even though the Roman republic died, its foundational principles — the rule of law, personal liberty and popular sovereignty — endured. Indeed, they would outlive even the Empire. They inspired the Founding Fathers of our country, whose own distrust of monarchy led them to found a new republic in conscious imitation of Rome’s.
Less than a year from its semiquincentennial, the American republic stands at an eerily similar crossroads. Faith in its democratic system and institutions are at a historic nadir, even as some in power speak increasingly favorably of strongman rule. But we need not follow Rome’s example. We can — and must — chart our own path.
The survival of the American republic now depends — as it always has — on patriots willing to stand and be counted.
John C. Engle, Logan Square
Sign of the times
Last Thursday, June 5, I walked through downtown Chicago with signs emblazoned “Feed Gaza.”
Upon arriving at Navy Pier, I was stopped by a private security detail. No signs allowed. I was again confronted at Millennium Park. My approach to the Bean was forbidden.
Apparently, we’ve now attached another asterisk to the First Amendment. It needn’t apply if its exercise might afflict the sensibilities of tourists. After all, who wants their day in the park to be ruined by the U.S. Constitution?
Scott K. Summers, Harvard
