define a tyrant …
man unfit to be ruler
of a free people
In every stage of these oppressions, we have petitioned for redress, in the most humble terms. Our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury.
A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Declaration of Independence, In Congress, July 4, 1776.
In a recent opinion piece, What Would the Nation’s Founders Think of Trump? 250 Years Later, Here Is the Answer, by Stacy Schiff, Ms. Schiff points out that the Declaration of Independence lists grievances against King George III.
Ms. Schiff then takes note of 27 of the grievances and applies them to today, writing, In 2026 they also feel miserably familiar.
Ms. Schiff writes, The Declaration cannot be said to be having a happy semiquincentennial. Very little about the document feels remotely self-evident today.
She ends her piece with this line.
At the end of his inventory of abuses and usurpations, Jefferson slips in a zinger: “A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.”
The new nation went on to create a Constitution so that the Nation might live and through that Constitution, our three branches of Government were set up as a system of Checks and Balances.
A system of Balance that required activity from all three Branches.
Those guys in Philadelphia never considered that two of the three branches would go AWOL.
Leaving a tyrant as a ruler of a free people.
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