The day the Declaration of Independence died: July 1, 2024

The Declaration of Independence (“DOI”) died July 1, 2024. The King lives. God save the King!

Yep, the president, or King of the U.S., now has official, legal immunity. It’s about time. It took 248 years to get rid of that pesky idea that “in America, Law Is King” promulgated by that traitor Tom Paine! 

Or the idea that government, to be legitimate, is based on the “consent of the governed” as expressed in law and that even the King cannot break the law. Finally, that Jeffersonian nonsense is gone!

When the DOI proclaimed that if the government acted against the law, it was “the duty of the people to alter or abolish it,”—what foolishness was set into the world! The idea the serfs, the peasants, the escaped slaves who emigrated to America’s shores could self-govern—what an absurdity! Of course, such an idea was doomed from the get-go. 

Strangely, however, the idea that “no one is above the law” somehow infected the world, and more and more nations adopted the “American Way” and moved towards “democracy.” This palpably stupid idea reached its height after WWII when America and the other victors actually put German leaders on trial and held them accountable for crimes against humanity—no immunity. 

“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and you can fool all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time,” said Abe Lincoln. So, all of the people were fooled some of the time, but finally, they came to their senses. Yes, siree!

Finally, the insanity has passed! The idea that the duty to faithfully execute the laws supposedly dictated by the U.S. Constitution was the president’s job has been laid to rest! Now that it is a Holiday, we can all get behind! 

No more listening to all the palaver about presidential crimes and worrying ourselves, “We may be Rome or the Fourth Reich!” Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, we are free at last! No more are we bound down by the law! The gloves can come off! 

The Righteous shall sally forth with the terrible swift sword—and no moaning about wars of aggression based on lies, or torture, or any other so-called “crime” shall be heard. Unleashed from the bogus claim that the King can do wrong, and if he does, then s/he, just like you or me or your juvenile delinquent kid, will answer to the law, the mighty shall smite!

Slowly, America has emerged from the shackles of law. Back to the 11th Amendment, the struggle of our brave Justices to establish immunity from the law for the government has been waged. Sure, the 11th Amendment did not bar suits against their own state for violations of the Constitution, but Justices soon “interpreted” that it did, expanding a narrow grant of immunity. As a result, the people lost the legal right to hold their own state government accountable to law in such cases. Words, being malleable, make the law malleable, and such malleability has now saved us! 

I was just about to sit down for the July 4 “holy day” and celebrate our nation, under the law so different from the King our ancestors overthrew: in England, the King is sovereign and the people his subjects—in America, we had fought a revolution to reject that idea. 

In America, the people are sovereign, and the president is their servant. Or at least he had to obey the laws passed by the people’s representatives sitting in Congress! Finally, the president is no longer bound down by the chains of the Constitution! Look out, world, here we come!

Yahweh warned the Jewish nation about Kings (Book of Samuel). The revolutionary generation sought to protect the American people from Kings. The July 4 remembrance was to recall those hard lessons to the soul of the people and renew their dedication to a nation under the law for all. 

I expect, over time, immunity will be expanded, the law will retreat, and the King will stand before the world in the same old clothes Kings have always worn, naked power unmoored from the law. 

As the dumbest lawyer in America, I thought Tom Paine was right. My apologies. King Law is dead! Long live the Outlaw King!

Kary Love, syndicated by PeaceVoice, is a Michigan attorney who has defended nuclear resisters in court for decades.