Kings without Crowns versus Kings without Power

Protesting Kings While Electing Emperors

For the last few weeks, American liberals have marched across the United States under the slogan “No Kings”, protesting what they see as Donald Trump’s authoritarian drift. The implication, of course, is that kings are stand-ins for tyranny and arbitrary rule.

Simultaneous “No Kings” protests were held in Canada, Australia and Denmark—actual monarchies, mind you.

Technically, the body politic we call the United States hasn’t been under a monarch since George III. In form, it is the world’s most strident republic. In function, however, it is ruled by an office that holds more concentrated power than any modern Western monarchy would dare permit.

If monarchy means literal rule by one, then America operates the most monarchical system in the Western world today.

The Concentration of Power by Design and Development

In A History of the American People, the great historian Paul Johnson notes that the U.S. Constitution, by compromise rather than conspiracy, delivered a very strong presidency—an office a particular president could make stronger still if he chose. Amid an otherwise decentralised vision, the presidency became a command centre for both domestic and foreign power.

Hamilton, the most monarchically inclined of the Founding Fathers, worked hard to ensure the presidency would be independent of the legislature, with the power to veto laws and act unilaterally where Congress was silent. As Johnson puts it, “He was much stronger than most kings of the day, rivalled or exceeded only by the ‘Great Autocrat,’ the Tsar of Russia.”

That was two centuries ago. Since then, the powers of formal monarchs have steadily declined. The power of the American executive has only grown.

Today, the U.S. president can:

• Wage war without congressional declarations

• Rewrite regulatory regimes via executive orders

• Rule through agencies that legislate in all but name

• Ignore statutes through “prosecutorial discretion”¹

• Appoint the judges who oversee his own administration

These are not ceremonial powers. They are functional, forceful and often unreviewable in law or practice.

Despite what the media might insist, it’s not just the “evil Republicans” who have behaved imperially. Barack Obama made liberal use of executive authority in ways previous generations would have called regal. His DACA programme, enacted after Congress failed to pass immigration reform, functionally rewrote enforcement policy without new legislation. Drone strikes were authorised without declared war or public scrutiny. He famously told his cabinet, “I’ve got a pen and I’ve got a phone”—a modern echo of l’état, c’est moi.

These powers were expanded under Trump and again under Biden. The presidency no longer acts in concert with Congress or the states. It acts first and dares anyone to object.

Meet the New Rome, Same as the Old Rome

The word emperor comes from the Latin imperator, a title once given to victorious Roman generals who held imperium—that is, the absolute power to command in both civil and military matters. In the Roman Republic, imperium was granted cautiously, temporarily and was often divided.

In the American Republic, it is concentrated in a single person, renewed in four-year blocks.

Another name for imperator is “commander-in-chief”. And as commander-in-chief, the US president holds imperium in its purest form. He exercises direct authority over the most powerful standing armies in human history, with global projection capabilities no empire—ancient or modern—has ever matched. He holds personal control over a nuclear arsenal capable of wiping civilisation from the face of the Earth.

No modern monarch commands so much force, so independently, and with so little real-time accountability. Not the King of the Belgians. Not the Emperor of Japan. Certainly not the King of the United Kingdom and his 14 other Commonwealth realms.

If unilateral command makes a monarch, then American presidents should have swapped suits for purple togas long ago.

Crowned Republics and Uncrowned Kingdoms

When assessing what a political system truly is, we should look to form, not labels. In countries like Japan, Belgium or New Zealand, the sovereigns are functionaries. The head of government is chosen by an elected parliament. The judiciary is independent and politically neutral.