The original “No Kings” protester

Protesters against President Donald Trump over the past year have often titled their gatherings, “No Kings.” They accuse the president of exercising power in monarchical fashion, and they call his supposedly kinglike actions illegitimate for a republic that operates under the Constitution.

These protesters seek to tap into a long and deeply held American antipathy toward monarchy and the rule of a single leader. When political participants have wished to cast aspersions on their opponents, they often have lobbed similar attacks. Alexander Hamilton was accused of wishing to bring monarchy during the Republic’s infancy. Andrew Jackson was called, “King Andrew” by his critics. Lincoln received similar treatment.

One of the earliest “No Kings” protesters was Thomas Paine. His pamphlet, Common Sense, first was published on January 10th, 1776—250 years ago last week.

Paine had immigrated to the colonies from Great Britain in 1774. The first shots of the Revolution had been fired at Lexington and Concord in April of 1775, but Paine’s pamphlet lit new fire for the cause—and he called not just for resistance to the British government, but for independence from Great Britain entirely. Common Sense became an instant best-seller. In a mere three months, some estimates say the pamphlet had sold 120,000 copies. By the time the American Revolution concluded, as many as 500,000 had been distributed.

Common Sense attacked a real monarch—Britain’s King George III. In his critiques, Paine did more than complain about particular wrongs committed by George and Parliament against the colonies. He articulated a broader political theory. This theory bore many similarities to the Declaration of Independence that the Second Continental Congress would produce around six months later. Human beings were created equal, endowed with natural rights, and formed governments out of a pre-political “state of nature” through consent. Those governments the people formed then operated through representation and were intended to protect the rights of the people.

By Paine’s account, Great Britain violated the principles of government by consent and the government’s purpose to protect rights. It violated consent at multiple levels, not just through its hereditary monarch, but also through Parliament’s aristocratic House of Lords. Moreover, it violated rights, among other ways, by its dismissive treatment of the colonists over the previous decade.

Many of these ideas would make it into the rhetoric and the writings of the ongoing Revolution. For Common Sense both exerted its own influence and paralleled already existing views.

Thankfully, however, the Founders of the United States did not go with all of Paine’s arguments. Paine disdained separation of powers and checks and balances, for instance. He thought the best government a simple one, as complex institutional interactions would allow corrupt officials to hide and divert blame. Checks and balances also were inherently contradictory in Paine’s view.

Paine also made quite weak arguments from Scripture, especially to support his general opposition to monarchy. He argued that, as “the exalting one man so greatly above the rest cannot be justified on the equal rights of nature, so neither can it be defended on the authority of scripture.” Along these lines, he claimed that Scripture taught that no kings existed in the world’s earliest ages and thus that those ages were peaceful. Only kingly pride started wars. Kingship in ancient Israel, moreover, was the means by which idolatry was introduced. Finally, God inherently disapproved of kingship, as Paine claimed that the stories of Gideon and the prophet Samuel proved.

Of course, this reading of Scripture ignored the passages in Judges arguing that the anarchic condition of Israel was because there was no king in the land. It passed by the passage in Deuteronomy 17 assuming, but seemingly not condemning, the future creation of a kingship. It underplayed the number of good kings in Israel’s history even as Paine rightly noted the ledger was more toward wicked than righteous. Paine’s weak exegesis on kingship only would look worse in later times, when Paine would openly express deist beliefs and criticize orthodox Christian doctrine.

Still, during our year-long semiquincentennial, Americans should remember Common Sense as an essential contribution to the Revolution. Though far from perfect, Paine furthered our two most cherished and guiding commitments: human equality and human liberty. His opposition to kingship always was at its strongest as a prudent application of these principles rather than as direct Scriptural interpretation.

Though current “No Kings” protesters seek to tap into this lasting sentiment, their distance from Paine and his Common Sense is stark. We have no hereditary, lifetime monarch. Instead, President Trump is a popularly chosen, term-limited executive more along the lines of what Paine demanded. Better than Paine’s vision, our Constitutional system retains distinct institutions with checks and balances that still operate, including against the current president.

So, as we remember 1776, let us not fall for contemporary false equivalencies. While re-reading Paine, let us exercise the “common sense” to recognize real from false kings and good from poor government.