No Kings; Thinking About..., June 16, 2025

TIMOTHY SNYDER, Thinking About... ; No Kings

"It was a thrill to march at the No Kings Rally in Philadelphia on Saturday with friends and about a hundred thousand people. On the stage, I led a chant of "no kings -- freedom," and I tried to explain three things that slogan or that sequence can mean.

1. The logic. We don't want kings -- or autocrats or oligarchs -- because they will represent themselves or their families or those who finance them rather than us, the people. They will take away not only our rights but the functionality of our government, the safety of our streets, the possibility of social mobility, and the integrity of our environment. So freedom means no kings -- but is also means all of the good things. It means a government that works, it means the right of people to be left alone, it means the American dream, it means harmony with nature...

Philly was wonderful and it was big, but it was just one of thousands of protests in which about five million people took part. There were probably more people just in Philly alone than at Trump's birthday parade in DC. All in all there were about one hundred times more protestors on Saturday than there were people watching Trump's self-celebration. We can be proud of that. And then do the next thing."

Trump’s Un-American Parade: What looks like an excess of strength may really be a deficit of liberty.; The Atlantic, June 13, 2024

 T. H. Breen, The Atlantic; Trump’s Un-American Parade: What looks like an excess of strength may really be a deficit of liberty.

"To discern the values of a nation and its leaders, watch their parades. Tomorrow, on the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army, President Donald Trump plans not only to display the country’s military might but also to present himself as its supreme leader. Some 6,600 soldiers and 200 tanks, warplanes, helicopters, and the like are expected to descend on Washington, D.C., to the tune of tens of millions of dollars. According to reports, parachuters will land on the Ellipse, where Trump instructed rioters on January 6 to “fight like hell,” and submit to him a folded American flag. All of this will occur on the president’s birthday, which spurs the question of whether we’re celebrating the country or the man who seeks to dominate it.

President George Washington offered a very different model of an American parade—one better suited for a moment that tested the nation’s founding principles. In October 1789, Washington was scheduled to visit Boston, which had planned a celebration in his honor. Unlike Trump, Washington resisted attempts to turn the event into a military display. The very notion of a ceremony organized around him made the first president uneasy...

Washington served in the Continental Army, so he understood the sacrifices that soldiers make for their country, and the public reverence those sacrifices are due. But he also knew the dangers of using the military for personal purposes. He saw clearly the need for the citizens of a republic to stand vigilant against the pretensions of a leader who would use the Army to flex his own might. He had no wish to become America’s elected monarch."

U.S. Senate Hearing: “Book Bans: Examining How Censorship Limits Liberty and Literature”; InfoDocket, September 11, 2023

 Gary Price, InfoDocket; U.S. Senate Hearing: “Book Bans: Examining How Censorship Limits Liberty and Literature”

"U.S. Senate Hearing: “Book Bans: Examining How Censorship Limits Liberty and Literature”

 September 11, 2023 by Gary Price

UPDATED POST: Now Available: Video Recording and Prepared Testimony of the Hearing . Note: A keyword searchable version of the video recording is also available via the C-SPAN Video Library.

—End Update—


The U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary hearing, “Book Bans: Examining How Censorship Limits Liberty and Literature” is scheduled to begin at 10:00am (Eastern) on Tuesday, September 12, 2023.

The hearing will be streamed live on the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary website.

Witnesses List (as of September 11, 2023):

Max Eden
Research Fellow
American Enterprise Institute
Arlington, VA

Nicole Neily
President
Parents Defending Education
Arlington, VA

Cameron Samuels
Student, Brandeis University
Co-Founder, Students Engaged in Advancing Texas
Katy, TX

Emily Knox
Associate Professor
University of Illinois
Bloomington, IL

The Honorable Alexi Giannoulias
Secretary of State
State of Illinois
Chicago, IL

Hearing Web Page"

Opinion: Where was Justice Neil Gorsuch’s mask?; The Washington Post, January 7, 2022

 Ruth Marcus, The Washington Post; Opinion: Where was Justice Neil Gorsuch’s mask?

"The sad part here is that Gorsuch is more emblem than outlier. The pandemic has brought out the best in some of us, but the worst — the most selfish and irresponsible — in too many others. This “you’re not the boss of me” immaturity has made a difficult period even harder.

Actions that should be understood as minor inconveniences desirable for the greater good have somehow been transformed into intolerable incursions on liberty. Being required to wear a mask has assumed symbolic resonance far in excess of any reasonable objection.

No one is the boss of Justice Gorsuch. Like his colleagues, he had a choice about whether to wear a mask. Unlike them, he chose poorly."

John McCain: Why We Must Support Human Rights; New York Times, May 8, 2017

John McCain, New York Times; 

John McCain: Why We Must Support Human Rights

"In a recent address to State Department employees, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said conditioning our foreign policy too heavily on values creates obstacles to advance our national interests. With those words, Secretary Tillerson sent a message to oppressed people everywhere: Don’t look to the United States for hope. Our values make us sympathetic to your plight, and, when it’s convenient, we might officially express that sympathy. But we make policy to serve our interests, which are not related to our values. So, if you happen to be in the way of our forging relationships with your oppressors that could serve our security and economic interests, good luck to you. You’re on your own...

In the real world, as lived and experienced by real people, the demand for human rights and dignity, the longing for liberty and justice and opportunity, the hatred of oppression and corruption and cruelty is reality. By denying this experience, we deny the aspirations of billions of people, and invite their enduring resentment...

We are a country with a conscience. We have long believed moral concerns must be an essential part of our foreign policy, not a departure from it. We are the chief architect and defender of an international order governed by rules derived from our political and economic values. We have grown vastly wealthier and more powerful under those rules. More of humanity than ever before lives in freedom and out of poverty because of those rules.

Our values are our strength and greatest treasure. We are distinguished from other countries because we are not made from a land or tribe or particular race or creed, but from an ideal that liberty is the inalienable right of mankind and in accord with nature and nature’s Creator."