It is time for a new (nonviolent) American Revolution

Excerpted from a speech by David Silverberg at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Greater Naples' 28th annual Progressive Voices Speak Out lecture series

By David Silverberg

Paradise Progressive

In 1655, the French King Louis the Fourteenth reportedly said, “L’Etat, c’est moi” – “I am the state” (or literally, “the state is me.”).

This past January 8, President Donald Trump was asked in a New York Times interview if there were any limits to his global power and he replied, “Yeah, there is one thing: my own morality, my own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”

Think about that for a moment. He is “The only thing” that can stop him. He didn’t say Congress. He didn’t say the courts. He didn’t say the people. He didn’t say the Constitution. Just himself.

And he also didn’t say international law, which was the context of the question. On that, he said, “I don’t need international law.” Direct quote!

My friends, it pains me to say this but America has just had its Louis the Fourteenth moment.

Let’s take a moment to let all this sink in.

On its 250th birthday, the United States has become exactly what its founders worked and fought and struggled against: a dictatorship, a monarchy – and as I pointed out last year, monarchy doesn’t necessarily mean the title “King.” “Mono” means “one” “archy” means power – one power - and today we are a monarchy just as surely as we were before independence in 1776.

And if anyone doubts it, they should just look at the artificial intelligence-generated images Donald Trump posted of himself in the past year.

Note those crowns!

We’re not yet a complete monarchy. The Constitution has not been formally abolished. We still believe and act as though we have the rights granted us by the Bill of Rights. We’re gathered here tonight legally in the belief that our ability to do so is entirely proper. I believe that the words I’m speaking to you now are protected by the First Amendment.

But the President and all those around him are on a path toward ending that Constitution and those rights—and they make no secret of this. Donald Trump said he would be a dictator and during the course of last year he proceeded to expand his powers and disregard the law, legitimized by a Supreme Court ruling saying he had immunity for his official actions. And then we’ve seen the seizures and shootings on the streets of Minneapolis.

Now, I could spend the entire rest of this talk enumerating his sins, his crimes and his outrages. But I have other things to get to. Rick Wilson, the Florida pundit and Lincoln Project co-founder who remotely addressed a gathering here last year, has published what is essentially a new Declaration of Independence on Substack, that lists all this.

The essential question that confronts us is: What do we do about this? What can we, as normal, everyday, non-violent, law-abiding citizens, people who don’t hold public office and aren’t in the public eye, do about it?

I have a few thoughts, which I hope you find worthy of consideration.

First, all my suggestions are non-violent and lawful. I still believe in the law and obeying it. American law still provides us with tools for change and great latitude for action. We still have numerous avenues of appeal, redress and change.

Having said that, I believe that the situation and the threat are so dire, we need a New American Revolution. Not a violent overthrow of what we had before but what I’ll call a restorative revolution. We need to restore the rights, the checks and balances and the democracy that existed before Donald Trump usurped them.

But we have to look at the effort holistically.

Remember something: The Trump presidency is not merely an administration in the mold of past presidencies. It’s a political, social and cultural revolution of its own that seeks total control. It aims to utterly oppress, dominate and subjugate Americans and the world to the whims, the hatreds, the prejudices and the rages of one single man. It’s an attack on everything we had before he became president and everything this country has meant for the past 250 years. It’s truly American carnage.

Everyone who values democracy, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the rule of law and who takes action should see himself or herself as part of a new American revolution. This goes beyond Republican or Democratic labels. And it goes beyond any single, particular action. We need to view the demonstrations in Minneapolis and the protests at the Government Center on Route 41 in Naples as connected, they’re all part of the same movement. We have to see the lawsuits and the vigils against Alligator Alcatraz as part of the same effort as the midterm elections and the grassroots organizing that has to be done there.

I would hope that if we see all these individual efforts as a single mass effort, unified with a common purpose, we can be more effective—at least conceptually—than if we only look at those efforts as individual and fragmented. All these actions together have a cumulative effect.

The actions we take are aimed not just at protesting this president’s illegal actions but at reversing their worst abuses and restoring sanity, dignity and decency to our government.

The list of reforms and changes that are needed are long. Anyone can come up with his or her favorites.

We also have to recognize that nothing is quick in a non-violent movement. Whatever their aims, non-violent mass movements are always marathons. They take long-term, persistent pressure on a multitude of fronts. But history has shown that they can work.

But as a start, one goal has to be to end the domestic terrorism of ICE, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement directorate of the Department of Homeland Security, DHS.

On a personal note, from 2004 to 2013 I was editor of a magazine called Homeland Security Today, so I watched the department and this particular directorate evolve.

ICE was created in 2002 by combining the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the US Customs Service. It was intended to prevent bad people and bad things from getting into the country.

So I know what ICE was supposed to be—as opposed to what it’s become.

Every country has to protect its borders and regulate its immigration. That’s a fundamental function. But ICE under the second Trump administration is a violent, lawless, unaccountable force of domestic terrorism, like Mussolini’s Blackshirts or Hitler’s Brownshirts.

ICE was intended to protect the American people from terrorism. Under Trump and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, its mission has become imposing terror and purging the Hispanic and foreign-origin population of the United States.

Sadly, I don’t think it can be redeemed. When sanity returns, its functions need to go to other agencies or a new agency with a different name. But ICE today is too twisted and tainted to remain as is. It needs to be demobilized and dispersed and those guilty of crimes prosecuted and the whole thing overhauled.

So that’s an example of an immediate, practical measure. But I want to look beyond the moment.

There are two revolutionary proposals that I think are particularly important, if less emotionally-charged than the many others people want to pursue. Both are constitutional amendments and could be enacted if the Constitution and its mechanisms remain in force—i.e., if they aren’t abolished altogether, which, by the way, Trump has threatened to do.

One amendment, which would be the Constitution’s 28th, would state that:

“The President of the United States shall be subject to the laws and penalties of the United States in his or her official and personal capacities.”

It is absolutely astonishing that this would have to be passed but when the Supreme Court ruled in 2024 that the president has legal immunity for all his official actions, they opened the gate to the outlaw dictatorship we’re suffering under today. This president is above the law and he knows it and he’s exploiting it. That can never be allowed to happen again. As the Supreme Court’s motto on the lintel of its building declares: “Equal justice under law” and that equality needs to be restored. Everyone—and I mean, everyone—has to be subject to the law.

Another amendment, which would be the 29th, would state:

“No Person shall be eligible to the Office of President who has not served in a prior elected office or held a military position of command. No Person previously found guilty of a crime by a jury of his or her peers, or found guilty of insurrection, or previously impeached and removed from office for high crimes and misdemeanors, shall be qualified to hold the office.”

No more criminals as President! This amendment is intended to ensure that never again can an utterly inexperienced, grossly unqualified, completely unfit individual attain the power of the presidency. Never again should the American people face the prospect of a criminal candidate running—or governing—from prison. It simply says: criminals need not apply.

Those are just a few suggestions.

Now, I put these and other ideas into a website post called “Manifesto for an American Rose Revolution” that went live on January 2nd.

A rose revolution? Why that?

Well, perhaps this is sentimental on my part but I—and maybe everyone in this room—can remember the Kennedy Administration.

And maybe you can remember when Jaqueline Kennedy created the White House Rose Garden.

It was a small area, only 125 feet long and 60 feet wide (38 meters by 18 meters) outside the Oval Office of the White House. But it was a place of beauty, elegance and grace that reflected the First Lady’s own.

The Rose Garden is no more. Trump paved it over to create a hideous patio.

What’s more, having destroyed the garden, he created an exclusive “Rose Garden Club” for his cronies, which costs a million dollars to join.

Well, you know, Trump believes that as President he owns the White House. He believes he can alter or destroy it as he pleases. He demolished the East Wing to replace it with a massive, gargantuan ballroom bearing his name, whose cost keeps ballooning and he has even more desecrations in mind.

But the White House doesn’t “belong” to the person who temporarily occupies it. It belongs to the American people. We’re the homeowners’ association. What’s more, every resident of that house is just a temporary tenant who holds it in trust for the next occupant.

The same can be said of the country as a whole. Trump thinks he owns it.

Folks, the time has come for the American people to take back their house—and their homeland.

And if there’s any one moment that will mark their success, it will be when that hideous patio is dug up and smashed and its pieces distributed as souvenirs and roses bloom again in the people’s garden.

That’s why I think a Rose Revolution is a good idea. The color “rose” is neither blue nor red; it includes a wide variety of shades and everyone and anyone can be part of it.

This is not just about a garden, of course.

Winston Churchill once said, “Democracy is the worst form of government—except for all the others that have been tried from time to time.”

The great thing about democracy, and the reason I believe in it so, is that it’s a form of government built on hope and courage and possibilities. We can all remember when Tim Walz thanked Kamala Harris for bringing joy back to politics. Democracy isn’t just about the way people are governed, it’s about enabling the pursuit of happiness—and giving people the hope and tools to achieve it.

By contrast, monarchy, dictatorship, autocracy are built on despair, and submission and hopelessness. In that kind of government there can be no success without the monarch’s approval or—especially with this president—getting his piece of the action. This is a presidency run on threat and fear and extortion.

So a restorative revolution, a New American Revolution, a Rose Revolution – whatever you want to call it – is not just about legislation or protests or particular measures, it’s about restoring joy and hope and dignity and decency and democracy and ending a reign of fear and intimidation. It’s about upholding the true values of America and restoring the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. And everyone has a role to play.

Now, I know that a single blogger typing in an obscure corner of Florida, throwing out some ideas, is hardly earthshaking. Believe me, no one is more conscious of the odds and the obstacles and the prospect of oblivion than I am. This talk may go up on the Internet along with billion and one other posts and comments and disappear completely into that great blogosphere in the cloud, or the sky, or whatever.

But you never know how history will play out—and this should inform all our actions. The one thing we can be certain of is that if we don’t do anything then nothing will ever be done.

I’m inspired in this by a hero of mine, Thomas Paine.

January 10th marked the 250th anniversary of the publication of Paine’s little pamphlet, “Common Sense,” which can truly be said to have sparked the American Revolution.

Who was Thomas Paine? Well, when he wrote Common Sense he was a nobody. He’d been a failed businessman and husband. He’d done some writing in his native England but of little more than local note. He’d immigrated to America in 1774 and was so sick from the passage that he had to be carried off the ship.

But he immediately grasped the potential of America and he had hope and could see the possibilities in change. He hated monarchy and oppression and he conveyed it to all the English inhabitants of North America. All he had to work with was language and logic and he put them to use, proving that anyone can have an impact.

Common Sense is as relevant today as it was in 1776 when it was published. I encourage everyone to make the effort to read it—and it does take some effort.

But even more immediate and relevant to us today is an essay that Paine wrote after Common Sense called The American Crisis. He wrote it during the darkest days of the American Revolution. He was a member of the Pennsylvania militia. American forces had been defeated in New York and pushed back through New Jersey. The army seemed about to dissolve and it looked like the revolutionary cause was at an end. The story is that he started writing an essay using a drumhead as a writing table.

It was under these circumstances that Paine penned the most famous paragraph he ever produced. Everyone knows the first sentence. But it’s worth listening to the entire paragraph because it’s every bit as relevant and as inspirational today as it was 250 years ago. We need to heed it.

“THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.”

So with that in mind, it’s time to start shaping America’s next 250 years.

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David Silverberg is a writer and editor with extensive experience covering political, military and security topics. He conceived and launched numerous specialized media outlets, both print and digital during a 32-year career based in Washington, DC. He now resides in Florida where you can check out his work at Paradise Progressive.