#1678 The No Kings Protests in Historical Context

Listening to America

History, Politics, Unitedstates, Society & Culture, American

4.6 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 17 November 2025

⏱️ 56 minutes

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Summary

Frequent guest host David Horton and Clay discuss America's current political paralysis and the deep frustration and cynicism of the American people in the wake of the No Kings protests of late October, which took place in 2,700 communities across the United States. If millions of people take to the streets to protest what they regard as the excesses of the current administration, are they likely to make a difference? What would it take to convince this or any other administration that it is not representing the best interests of a significant portion of the American public? Clay and David discuss the protests of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, in particular Martin Luther King, Jr.'s commitment to nonviolent disruption of American life. Voter turnout and civic participation are lower in the United States than in the rest of the world. What would it take to inspire a mass movement that would change the course of American public life? Clay suggests that everyone read Thoreau's On Civil Disobedience and Martin Luther King's Letter from a Birmingham Jail. This episode was recorded on October 21 2025.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, everyone. This is my introduction to this week's podcast, David Horton, my friend from
0:05.6	Radford University in Virginia, and I talk about the no-king's protests and what they amount to.
0:12.9	Will it move the needle? Is this the right approach to trying to re-center the American political
0:19.5	system? I was really shocked and dismayed by the video that the president released trying to re-center the American political system.
0:21.0	I was really shocked and dismayed by the video that the president released of an airplane
0:26.0	dumping excrement on the protests.
0:29.2	I don't know what happened to this country, but the just almost unbearable vulgarization
0:33.7	of America, at least in some circles, is really deeply, deeply depressing.
0:39.1	So anyway, David Horton and I have a long and interesting discussion today about all this,
0:43.1	about what would move the needle.
0:44.4	And I made suggestions.
0:45.6	I'm just going to list them again so that you get them right up front.
0:49.1	Read the Constitution.
0:50.8	There's 4,000 in some words.
0:52.8	You need to read it once every six months or so, just to make sure you know what's in it.
0:58.5	Read a letter from a Birmingham jail, 1963.
1:02.3	Martin Luther King, Jr.
1:03.5	I was just at the jail cell in Birmingham at the Civil Rights Institute there.
1:08.6	It's just so moving, so beautiful to see that, that squalid little jail cell and to hear him and then to read him.
1:20.6	Nonviolent protest, you know, the protests that occurred in the No King's movement are impressive, and they matter somehow, but do they
1:30.4	move the needle?
1:32.1	And so Martin Luther King was trying to find a space between violent protests, which he did
	...

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