This Speakout was written by Bob Burns, a professor emeritus of political science at South Dakota State University.

Our nation was founded upon the principle of rule of law as our founders rejected governance by a colonizing monarchy in a distant land.

The American revolutionaries of the 1770s sought to be free of the purely arbitrary administration of “justice” and among other demands insisted upon prior notice and a fair hearing before the power of the state might severely restrict the freedom of the individual. These same patriots demanded an individual liberty to express opposition to those who govern without fear of reprisal. These and other demands of our founders became enshrined in the fundamental law of our land in the form of the U.S. Bill of Rights.

The White House is now occupied by a new pretend monarch who has little regard for prior notice and fair hearing and even less respect for viewpoints opposing his policy objectives. We witness this as a Columbia green card graduate student is arbitrarily seized in front of his 8-month pregnant wife and hustled off to a distant federal detention center in preparation for a speedy deportation. There has been no determination of his committing any crime as no evidence of such has been presented and no hearing of any sort has been convened. When a federal district court judge put a halt to his deportation, the monarch in the White House complained about a radical rogue lunatic judge who should be impeached. Readers familiar with the English medieval Star Chamber proceedings will see the similarities. This atrocity is then topped by the ICE seizure of over 200 Venezuelans and their speedy deportation to a hell prison in Nicaragua. Some, if not most of those persons seized, were in our country under a temporary protected person status while others were undocumented. Supposedly, they are members of a terrorist gang who have invaded our homeland. Some or all might be members of a notorious gang labeled a terrorist organization by our monarch but we will never know for no evidence has been made public regarding the status of each of the individuals and no hearing was held. A similar action occurred during World War II when our nation arbitrarily imprisoned over 140,000 Japanese Americans in what were politely called relocation camps.

And then there are the cases of expressing viewpoints opposing the divine wisdom of the monarch. Allow student criticism of the IDF reckless killing of nearly 49,000 Palestinian Gazans and the institution is punished with a $600 million cut in federal grant money. Express institutional support for transgender athletes and lose nearly $200,000 in federal grant money. Spread the voice of America’s democracy abroad and be silenced. In the words of a victim of Nazi Germany, “and then they came for me.”

As our Bill of Rights is ignored and our federal government is methodically disassembled to allow for more monarchical rule, our elected members of the U.S. Congress offer only token resistance. Our federal judiciary is standing strong in our defense, but we must stand in defense of the judiciary or judicial rulings will be set aside by the monarch. The monarch can ignore judicial rulings and not suffer the penalty of criminal contempt because he enjoys near total immunity from criminal prosecution. The monarch’s underlings might also ignore judicial rulings knowing the monarch will grant them a pardon for their transgression. This is not just a possibility. White House defiance of the judiciary is a reality in our nation today. Impeachment and removal of the monarch from the throne is the political solution to the legal bind we find ourselves in today. Mustering a simple majority of the Republican-controlled House for impeachment and two thirds vote of the Republican-controlled Senate for removal of the monarch seems unlikely but achieving independence from the monarch in 1776 also seemed unlikely. Independence was achieved only through the bold and courageous words and actions of the citizenry who insisted that arbitrary rule must end and the rule of law must prevail. God save our democracy!