'No Kings' Protests Are the Last Test of Democracy. Citizens Must Do their Duty.

For decades, both major parties slowly abandoned any notion of civic obligation. Politics became transactional. Campaigns were reduced to competing offers.

Hundreds of people gather on the steps of the Michigan State Capitol in Lansing, Mich., on Feb. 5, 2025, to protest actions taken by President Donald Trump during his first two weeks in office. | Andrew Roth/Michigan Advance

For generations, we’ve spoken of America as a land of opportunity. We’ve defined ourselves by liberty, enshrined freedom in founding documents, and told the world that the rights of the individual are sacred here.

But somewhere along the way, we stopped talking about the other half of the bargain.

We stopped talking about responsibility — to one another, to our country, to the fragile promise of democracy itself. And now we’re finding out what happens when a nation built on shared purpose forgets that citizenship is not just a status. It is a duty.

For decades, both major parties slowly abandoned any notion of civic obligation. Politics became transactional. Campaigns were reduced to competing offers: tax cuts or healthcare, debt relief or deregulation. Voters became customers. Citizens became click targets.

And in that vacuum — where common cause once lived — we became atomized, suspicious, angry.

Into that breach stepped foreign interference. Russia didn’t create our divisions, but they poured fuel on them — exploiting open platforms, gaming algorithms, deploying bots, and amplifying every lie. What they lit, Donald Trump drove a Cybertruck through.

He didn’t just break the political system. He weaponized the void where our sense of mutual responsibility used to be.

Read the Constitution. Read the Bill of Rights. These founding texts speak in powerful, soaring terms about liberty and justice — but they are almost silent about duty. That omission has echoed through the centuries. Rights without responsibilities become a form of narcissism, a civic adolescence.

We talk about “freedom” as if it’s something we’re owed, rather than something we steward together. We speak of “opportunity” as if it’s a personal lottery win, not a system we’re meant to keep open for the next generation.

This is not sustainable. A country cannot endure if no one feels responsible for the country.

Trump is not subtle about his intentions. He promises retribution. He threatens journalists. He prosecutes his political enemies and pardons his allies. He already tried to end American democracy once—and he is openly preparing to try again, this time with fewer obstacles in his path.

And so we must ask ourselves: Have we so lost the meaning of citizenship that we will simply watch this happen?

Will we fail the final test of democracy because we no longer understand that democracy depends not on institutions — but on us?

Abraham Lincoln once wrote of the “mystic chords of memory” that bind Americans together across time, geography, and difference. He believed that in our darkest moments, we would remember who we were — and rise.

This is one of those moments.

The test is not about politics. It’s about whether Americans still believe in being citizens, not just individuals.

Citizens who show up. Who speak out. Who resist the slide into dictatorship not with violence, but with presence, with voices, with votes, with courage.

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June 14: The Day We Remember What Citizenship Means

The moment to act is now. On Saturday, June 14, citizens across the country will gather in the No Kings Protests — in cities and towns, on sidewalks and public squares— to stand up for the basic truth that America is not a monarchy, and Trump is not above the law.

Find your protest. Show up. Be seen. Be heard.

Go to NoKings.org to locate an event near you.

This is not a drill. It is not a rehearsal.

It is our moment.

Our duty.

Our test.

We will not vanish as silent spectators but rise as citizens of the United States of America.