No Kings - or Just the Wrong King?

In 2014, I wrote a post titled “Less like a president than a king,” warning of the long, unchecked expansion of executive power in the United States. I made that case during the Obama administration, when the Supreme Court unanimously rebuked the president for exceeding his constitutional authority. Back then, there was little appetite on the political left to hear concerns about presidential overreach, because their party held power.

Fast forward to today, and protests have erupted under the banner “No Kings.” Predictably concentrated in deep-blue cities, these demonstrations have been organized or supported by a who's  who of progressive activist groups: Indivisible, MoveOn, the ACLU, unions, and others. 

The message, at first glance, is a noble one—opposition to authoritarian rule. Many participants are sincere and good people, and I do not seek to offend them or diminish their participation in a cherished First Amendment liberty to protest. I even admire them for engaging. However, these protests are not about tyranny; they are about partisanship. They are not a spontaneous defense of liberty, but an organized campaign effort. 

The slogan “No Kings” is not a call for constitutional restraint—it’s a campaign slogan, just like “Move On.” “Resist” and “Black Lives Matter,” formulated by powerful organizers who have developed networks, communications strategies, funding pipelines, and local chapters precisely to mobilize around virtually any progressive cause at short notice. 

The irony, of course, is that the expansion of executive power has been building for more than a century. It accelerated dramatically under the Obama administration, continued under Trump, and intensified even further under Joe Biden. Presidents from both parties have tested these boundaries. Richard Nixon's abuses of power gave birth to the term "imperial presidency" itself, and George W. Bush’s post-9/11 expansions of surveillance and wartime authority marked another significant leap. Each new president inherits the tools left behind by the previous one and builds upon them. Each new party in power forgets the warnings it once issued when the other party held the White House.

To be clear, many Americans attending No Kings protests may be sincere. They may truly fear the return of Donald Trump. They may honestly believe that democracy is under threat. But sincerity without consistency is not a principle; it’s partisanship. These voices were largely silent during the Obama and Biden expansions of federal authority. They did not take to the streets when executive orders flowed freely, when mandates came down from on high, or when the press often celebrated unilateral action as necessary in the face of a “do-nothing Congress.”

These protests, like so many before them, aren’t changing anyone’s mind and may be counterproductive. They’re not aimed at persuading the skeptical middle. They’re not trying to win over voters with facts or arguments. They are public rituals of confirmation bias - emotional reinforcement masquerading as civic engagement.

For many Americans in the political center, the symbolism of these protests is increasingly alienating. The imagery on display rarely includes the American flag, considered oppressive by many on the left. Instead, one sees a chaotic sea of interest group banners—Pride flags, trans flags, Palestinian flags, Mexican flags, and countless emblems representing causes few Americans even recognize. There are no appeals to common citizenship, no unifying symbols, no sense that this is a protest meant for everyone. The message unintentionally sent is not one of unity or constitutional fidelity, but of ideological separatism. 

The message of alienation is all the more potent because of the frequency. Worse yet, the frequency and sameness of left-wing protests have led to fatigue. When every issue becomes a “moral emergency,” and every Saturday brings another march or rally, people tune out. The theatrics become tired. The outrage loses its force. Protest, once a powerful form of dissent, has become just another background noise in the progressive media ecosystem.

In the latest round of demonstrations, violent outbreaks occurred in Portland, Los Angeles, Denver, and other cities. The press often frames the violence as separate from the “main protest.” But the public is not fooled when a reporter stands in front of a burning building, saying the demonstration was largely peaceful. When bricks fly, windows shatter, and police are attacked, Americans notice. And because these incidents almost always accompany left-wing protests, many conclude that the organizers and their allies quietly tolerate the violence.

Every broken window and toppled statue in the name of protest becomes another brick in Trump’s political comeback. These spectacles don’t discredit him—they validate the fears that led many voters to support him in the first place. The more chaotic these protests appear, the more persuasive he becomes as a bulwark against cultural disorder.

Far from scaring people into voting against Trump, the disorder reminds voters why they turned to him in the first place: because they saw in him a bulwark against the very cultural chaos these protests now represent. The more these spectacles escalate, the more the center recoils. 

If concern about tyranny only surfaces when one’s political opponents hold office, it is not actually a concern about tyranny. It is a concern about losing.

The Founders feared that liberty would not be lost all at once but eroded slowly by the unchecked ambitions of government factions. The presidency was never meant to be the center of gravity in our constitutional system. But today, both parties have helped transform it into exactly that.

The truth is this: the problem is not who wears the crown. The problem is that we have allowed the presidency to become a throne. Both parties have contributed to the growth of executive power. And unless Americans of all stripes recognize that danger, regardless of who holds office, we will not preserve the republic.

“No Kings” is a compelling slogan. But until we mean it—every time—it’s just another partisan costume in a very old play.

From Ivy Halls: The Collapse of Moral Clarity and Truth on College Campuses

At recent graduation ceremonies at prestigious universities such as Harvard, MIT, Yale, Columbia, Dartmouth, Cornell, NYU, UC Berkeley, and George Washington University, political activism continued to dominate as students disrupted these events. Kafias were worn, Palestinian flags were flown, diplomas were burned, walkouts occurred, and chants praised those who agreed with them or condemned those who sought moderation.

Some student commencement speakers took to the podium to “go off script,” using their moment in the spotlight to accuse Israel of genocide and demand a “free Palestine.” These comments were not fringe outbursts; they were largely met with applause and praise from audiences that included faculty, students, and families. In the most elite institutions of the Western world, these chants of “resistance” have become a new moral currency.

The actions and words of students reveal something far more troubling than youthful ignorance: they expose a profound and deliberate disconnect from history, morality, and truth. These students, graduates of some of the most prestigious universities in America, seem completely unaware of efforts to establish a Palestinian state over the past 75 years. Each time, Palestinian leadership has rejected peace in favor of violence or political intransigence.

Yitzak Rabin, Bill Clinton, Yassir Arafat - White House, 1993

The concept of a two-state solution is not a new one. It was first proposed in 1947 when the United Nations suggested partitioning British Palestine into two states - one Jewish, one Arab. Jewish leaders accepted, while Palestinian and Arab leaders rejected the proposal. Subsequently, five Arab armies attacked the newly established state of Israel. This moment set the tone for decades of resistance to Israel’s very existence.

Since then, peace has been offered, and refused, several times:

Council on Foreign Relations

In every case, the consistent theme has been the Palestinian leadership’s refusal to accept a Jewish state under any circumstances. It’s not about borders. It’s not about settlements. It’s about the very existence of Israel.

This is the unspoken truth behind the slogan “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free.” It does not envision peaceful coexistence; rather, it envisions a Palestinian state replacing Israel, stretching from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. It is a call for elimination, not liberation.

While critics often paint Israel as an intransigent or expansionist state, history tells a different story, one of pragmatism and a willingness to negotiate even after enduring repeated acts of aggression. Following the coordinated Arab invasion that immediately followed its founding in 1948, and later conflicts such as the Six-Day War in 1967, Israel took defensive control of strategic territories like the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights. Yet Israel has repeatedly demonstrated that it does not seek land for land’s sake. In 1979, it signed a historic peace treaty with Egypt, the first between Israel and an Arab nation, returning the Sinai Peninsula as part of that agreement. Similarly, Israel forged a peace treaty with Jordan in 1994, further reinforcing its commitment to peaceful coexistence with neighboring states willing to accept its right to exist.

More recently, the Abraham Accords marked a significant breakthrough in Middle East diplomacy. In 2020, Israel normalized relations with several Gulf States, including the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, followed by agreements with Sudan and Morocco. These accords shattered the longstanding myth that no Arab nation could make peace with Israel until a Palestinian state was created. In fact, Israel was on the verge of a groundbreaking normalization agreement with Saudi Arabia in 2023, a potential game-changer in the region. That progress was intentionally derailed by Hamas through its brutal October 7th attack, designed not only to provoke war but to sabotage the very prospects of regional peace.

The pattern is clear: Israel has repeatedly extended its hand in peace to its neighbors, often at significant strategic cost. Hamas, by contrast, offers no such hand - only rockets, tunnels, and hostage-taking. The difference in intent could not be more stark. Israel seeks a future where Jews and Arabs alike can live in dignity and peace. Hamas seeks only to destroy, destabilize, and dominate. Any honest evaluation of the region must reckon with this truth.

It is impossible to witness the images coming out of Gaza, particularly those of dead or wounded women and children, families torn apart, and entire neighborhoods reduced to rubble, without feeling sorrow, horror, and grief. These are human tragedies, and they should move us. They should prompt moral reflection. Israel itself has acknowledged the suffering of civilians and claims to have taken steps to minimize harm where possible, including issuing evacuation warnings when targeting militants embedded within civilian areas. However, war, especially against a group like Hamas that deliberately uses civilians as shields, results in devastation. Even if Israel’s estimates are accurate, claiming 20,000 Hamas fighters killed and a roughly 1:1 civilian-to-combatant ratio, that still means 20,000 innocent lives lost.

Many Americans are moved by what they see and hear—not because they endorse terrorism, but because they instinctively sympathize with the vulnerable. Images of grieving mothers, injured children, and families forced from their homes evoke a powerful emotional response. That compassion is not misplaced. However, it must be accompanied by a deeper understanding of the political and military context—how Hamas deliberately provokes this suffering, embeds its fighters in schools and hospitals, and rejects any vision of coexistence with Israel.

Some critics also highlight the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank as a long-term erosion of the prospects for a Palestinian state. They argue that the remaining territory resembles Swiss cheese more than a viable nation. There’s truth in this concern. However, it must also be recognized that the Palestinians have rejected multiple peace offers, in 1948 and in later years, that would have granted them significantly more land and autonomy than they currently possess or can hope to achieve. Too often, the Palestinian leadership, both Fatah and Hamas, has pursued maximalist goals instead of pragmatic compromise, only to diminish future potential opportunities. The tragedy is that generations of ordinary Palestinians have paid the price for those decisions.

The power asymmetry between Israel and the Palestinians is evident, but power alone does not dictate moral right or wrong. Following the horrific attack on October 7th, Israel is determined to ensure that such an atrocity never happens again. This is not brutality for its own sake; rather, it is the logical and, from Israel’s perspective, necessary act of a nation defending its people from annihilation. Peace cannot be achieved while Hamas rules Gaza. While we mourn the innocent lives lost, we must not forget who ignited this war and what must change for peace to have a chance to emerge from the ruins.

The outrage over the destruction and loss of innocent life in war is both proper and necessary. However, ignoring or distorting the root cause represents a moral failure in itself. While we should mourn the deaths of innocent children, we must also speak plainly: the blame lies squarely with the Palestinian leadership. These leaders have rejected every offer of peace and statehood, indoctrinate children to hate and kill Jews, glorify martyrdom through suicide bombings, divert humanitarian aid to build terror tunnels and rockets, and sabotage any progress toward Arab-Israeli reconciliation through acts of barbarism - such as raping, murdering, and taking hostages in the name of resistance.

Israel has made significant efforts to reduce the deaths of innocent people in the war. The casualties that occur are not due to a lack of effort on its part, but rather to Hamas, which views the deaths of children as a propaganda tool to diminish Western support for Israel. Their tunnel access often leads directly into a child’s bedroom in a civilian home. They do not allow civilians to seek protection within the extensive tunnel network they have constructed. They confiscate humanitarian aid for themselves and their fighters, denying it to civilians. To Hamas, the civilian population is merely a tool for propaganda. Images of dead Palestinian children are a resource, and teenage suicide bombers are martyrs for the cause.

The path to a permanent cease fire and beginning the long process of recovery is clear, though not easy. If Hamas were to release the remaining hostages, many of whom are feared dead due to mistreatment or execution, and renounce its charter calling for Israel’s destruction, the immediate justification for Israel’s military campaign would vanish.

However, more fundamentally, real progress toward permanent peace would require the Palestinian people, particularly in Gaza, to reject Hamas’s violent and absolutist leadership in favor of representatives truly committed to peace, coexistence, and governance rather than terror. Only then could credible negotiations begin, talks not rooted in fantasy or denial of Israel’s existence, but in mutual recognition and a desire to end the bloodshed. Such a shift would not erase the pain of the past months, but it would open the door to rebuilding Gaza and rekindling the long-dormant vision of a viable Palestinian state living peacefully alongside Israel.

So, how did we get to a point where Ivy League graduates cheer slogans that mirror the objectives of terror organizations like Hamas? The answer lies not only in politics or foreign policy, it stems from the ideological takeover of our higher education system.

For decades, American universities, especially elite institutions, have nurtured a radical worldview that rebranded Marxist ideology through the lens of identity and justice. After the revolutionary student movements of the 1960s and ’70s failed to dismantle American institutions through protest, violence, and cultural rebellion, many of their leaders simply shifted their strategy. Figures like Angela Davis, once associated with the Communist Party and the Black Panther movement, and Eldridge Cleaver, a former Minister of Information for the Panthers, exchanged the streets for the seminar room. They, along with others, entered academia and cultural institutions not to abandon their mission, but to advance it through education and indoctrination.

At the intellectual core of this transition was Herbert Marcuse, a Frankfurt School Marxist who became a guru to many New Left radicals. Marcuse championed the idea of “repressive tolerance," the belief that free speech and liberal norms must be curtailed to suppress dominant (i.e., capitalist or Western) ideologies. He and others laid the groundwork for a takeover of institutions, beginning with schools of education. There, future teachers, administrators, and professors were infused with a radical framework that rejected traditional American values in favor of critical theory and anti-capitalist identity politics.

Economic class struggle was reinterpreted as a cultural and social power struggle. The dichotomy of the proletariat versus the bourgeoisie evolved into a worldview of oppressors versus the oppressed—based on race, gender, sexuality, and later, intersectionality, a framework advanced by scholars such as Kimberlé Crenshaw. This concept gained traction in the mainstream through modern ideological entrepreneurs like Ibram X. Kendi, whose mantra that “the only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination” exemplifies the new orthodoxy.

From the humanities to the sciences, from faculty hiring to student admissions, this worldview has been institutionalized through Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) bureaucracies. These DEI structures now serve as ideological enforcement arms, silencing dissent and prioritizing activism over inquiry. The death of George Floyd in 2020 acted as an accelerant, propelling this ideology into overdrive—not only across college campuses but also into corporate boardrooms, K–12 classrooms, the media, and even the highest levels of government.

A central pillar of intersectional Marxist ideology is anti-colonialism—a worldview that interprets historical grievances through the prism of imperial conquest and racial oppression. On American college campuses, this appears in symbolic gestures like land acknowledgments, where institutions routinely recite the names of Native tribes that once inhabited the land. These acknowledgments, though often sincere in intent, suggest an absolutist moral claim: that any land ever taken by one people from another is illegitimate and should be regarded as stolen.

But if this principle were applied universally, the entire structure of global civilization would collapse. Human history is a record of migrations, conquests, collapses, and the rise of new political entities. No culture, religion, or people has a monopoly on conquest—empires have risen and fallen in every region of the world. To suggest that only Western colonialism is illegitimate is to ignore the conquests of the Arab empires, the Ottoman Turks, the Mongols, the Moors, and the Islamic Caliphates that expanded into lands inhabited by Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians, and others. If we follow this logic to its extreme, must the world unwind thousands of years of history to return land to some imagined “original” owner?

This selective historicism is especially evident in the debate over Israel. Campus activists often cite the post-World War II partition plan and the subsequent creation of Israel as a colonial imposition. Yet they overlook that the Jewish presence in the region predates not only the modern Palestinian identity but also the Islamic faith itself. They ignore that the Ottoman Empire controlled the region for centuries, and that before that, the land changed hands in countless conflicts and empires. These complex histories are erased in favor of a simplistic binary: Israel is the “colonizer,” Palestinians the “colonized.” Such reductionism may serve activist slogans, but it distorts both history and the prospects for peace.

The consequences of this decades-long ideological capture became starkly visible on October 7, 2023, when Hamas launched its brutal terror attack on Israeli civilians - murdering families, raping women, and taking hostages, including children and the elderly. Instead of uniting in moral clarity to condemn such atrocities, many students and faculty, steeped in years of identity-based indoctrination, responded with moral confusion or even justification. To them, the violence was not senseless terror, but the “resistance” of the oppressed. Conditioned by an academic culture that frames global conflicts through the lens of oppressor versus oppressed, many interpreted the massacre not as a violation upon humanity but as a predictable, even righteous, response to systemic power imbalance. This is the bitter fruit of the ideological revolution that reshaped our universities - a worldview so warped that it can excuse barbarity if committed by those cast as victims.

The October 7th attack by Hamas was not merely an act of terror - it was a calculated attempt to disrupt the growing normalization of relations between Israel and its Arab neighbors, particularly the U.S.–brokered negotiations with Saudi Arabia. Hamas understood that a formal Saudi-Israeli agreement would signal a significant shift in the region - a broad Arab-Israeli alliance based on mutual interests, security, and economic cooperation. To undermine that momentum, Hamas unleashed atrocities so brutal that they anticipated Israel would respond with overwhelming force, hoping the retaliatory devastation in Gaza would inflame global opinion, particularly in the West, and isolate Israel diplomatically.

They failed. While the images of destruction in Gaza stirred sympathy and protests across U.S. campuses and Western cities, the regional strategy backfired. Hezbollah, although engaged, was contained. The Houthis faced direct confrontation and degradation. Most importantly, Iran, Hamas’ main sponsor and the architect of this axis of terror, suffered a significant blow to its regional influence and defensive capabilities. Israel, supported by its technological advantage and regional cooperation, demonstrated its ability not only to defend its territory but also to project power against its enemies. Iran now finds itself more vulnerable than ever, as Arab states like the UAE, Bahrain, and even Saudi Arabia continue to seek quieter paths towards cooperation with Israel.

These Arab governments must, for domestic reasons, express sympathy for the Palestinians. However, their actions speak louder than words. None have moved to absorb large numbers of Gazans, and none are offering to host Hamas leaders. They know from experience that the radical Islamist vision of Hamas—an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood—is fundamentally incompatible with their own goals of regional stability, economic modernization, and peaceful coexistence.

This is the aspect that many Western student protesters and activists fail to understand. By embracing Hamas as a symbol of anti-colonial resistance, they are aligning themselves not with peace or justice but with a violent ideology rejected by nearly every responsible state actor in the region. Hamas does not represent the future of the Palestinians; it represents an obstacle. Those genuinely committed to justice and a two-state solution must stop romanticizing terror and start confronting the hard truth: peace cannot coexist with extremism.

Less than two weeks ago, outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., two young Israeli embassy employees were gunned down in cold blood. They were not soldiers. They were not on a battlefield. They were murdered on the streets of the United States capital in broad daylight. As Jeffrey Herf wrote in The Free Press, this was “the first lethal attack on Jews in the United States carried out by a person who emerged from the leftist-Islamist climate in the universities before and since October 7.” 

Yesterday, just eleven days later, an illegal alien from Egypt attacked a group participating in a run in Boulder, Colorado, calling for the return of Israeli hostages held by Hamas. He ignited eight people on fire using a makeshift flamethrower and Molotov cocktails. In both cases, the perpetrators chanted, “Free Palestine.”

These were not isolated incidents. They are part of a rising wave of antisemitic violence that has surged since the Hamas massacre of October 7. It is no longer fringe - it is fashionable. Hatred of Israel, once confined to radical corners, is now cloaked in academic jargon and chanted by the sons and daughters of privilege.

These murders and assaults, along with the climate that made it possible, are the poisoned fruit of an educational system hijacked by ideology and reliant on the teats of foreign donations and the full tuition paid by foreign students. An assassin may have pulled the trigger, but the culture that taught him to hate was nurtured in the lecture halls of our universities.

It’s time to hold higher education accountable. Many of our colleges and universities have turned into activist factories instead of centers of learning. They’ve exchanged critical thinking for groupthink, historical analysis for propaganda, and moral courage for performative outrage. The intersectional mob needs to be confronted. These institutions must be reclaimed, reformed, or replaced.

There has been some delayed reflection on college campuses following the turmoil of protests in 2023 and 2024, along with a growing recognition that antisemitism is a serious and escalating issue. However, that soul-searching only began after a few university presidents were compelled to address the matter under intense scrutiny during congressional testimony. The Trump administration has since exerted pressure on colleges and universities to take concrete action, demanding they confront antisemitism, dismantle DEI bureaucracies, and eliminate all forms of institutionalized racism. Some institutions have started to comply, though often with reluctance; others continue to resist. Superficial changes and minor disciplinary actions against wayward commencement speakers will not resolve a deeply systemic problem. Restoring integrity to higher education will necessitate a sustained effort—and likely a decade or more of serious reform.

Silence is complicity. The blood of two young Israelis in D.C., the hundreds massacred on October 7, the deaths of thousands of innocents in Israel and Gaza, and the rising tide of antisemitism on our campuses demand more than outrage—they demand truth, courage, and accountability.

We must speak out—but that is not enough. We must also take responsibility for fully informing ourselves about the history and context of the world we live in, especially regarding life and death, war and peace, freedom and tyranny. We owe it to those who were murdered. We owe it to the innocent. We owe it to the truth. And we owe it to the next generation of Americans, who deserve institutions of learning dedicated to the honest pursuit of knowledge, not seminaries of Marxist activism and anti-Western propaganda.

****

SHARING: Please consider sharing these blog posts via social media or email if you find them interesting by providing a link to either https://www.libertytakeseffort.com or https://libertytakeseffort.substack.com
DISTRIBUTION: Liberty Takes Effort shifted its distribution from social media to email delivery via Substack as a Newsletter. If you would like to receive distribution, please email me at libertytakeseffort@gmail.com To see archived blog posts since 2014 visit www.libertytakeseffort.com.
DISCLAIMER: The entire content of this website and newsletter are based solely upon the opinions and thoughts of the author unless otherwise noted. It is not considered advice for action by readers in any realm of human activity. Its purpose is to stimulate discussion on topics of interest to readers to further inform the public square. Use of any information on this site is at the sole choice and risk of the reader.