The Mislabeling of Dissent: What Fort Worth’s ‘No Kings Day’ Taught Me About Free Speech and Responsibility
By Mark Maxwell
Fort Worth, Texas – June 2025
I stood near the edge of a gathering at Burnett Park prior to entering the organized protest, just a few blocks from where the West begins and the suits of the courthouse meet the boots of cattle country. The event was called “No Kings Day”, a pointed rejection that its organizers claimed of creeping authoritarianism. As I watched signs waving and slogans shouted, I asked what I believed was a reasonable question: “Why protest a duly elected president?”
Within 24 hours, I was labeled a counter-protester by The Fort Worth Report, a mischaracterization that, while subtle, speaks volumes about the moment we’re living in.
I wasn’t there to disrupt, I wasn’t waving a flag or even wearing a red hat; I was there to understand. As a former Marine, a business owner, and someone who still believes in this American experiment, I’ve learned that you don’t gain wisdom by standing behind a bullhorn, you get it by asking questions, especially the hard ones.
I wasn’t opposing free speech, I was exercising it. I wasn’t countering a protest, I was participating in the dialogue that democracy demands. Yet in today’s polarized narrative machine, if you don’t chant the slogans, you must be the enemy.
There’s an irony in protesting a president with signs declaring “No Kings” when the man you’re protesting was chosen through the very mechanisms that keep monarchy at bay. The peaceful transfer of power, especially one achieved at the ballot box, isn’t tyranny. It’s order. It’s civilization. It’s the very system these protestors claim to defend, whether they realize it or not.
This isn’t to say we shouldn’t protest. On the contrary, the First Amendment guarantees our right to speak freely, to assemble, and yes, to question power. But that right loses its moral weight when it’s wielded without a reciprocal responsibility to think critically and engage honestly.
The mislabeling I experienced is a symptom of something deeper: the accelerating collapse of nuance. The assumption that everyone must fit neatly into one of two tribes. It’s the same binary mindset that devalues freedom of thought and inflames cultural tension.
It often reminds us that civilization is a fragile structure built atop a chaos that is always threatening to return. The misrepresentation of motive, the silencing of dissent, the tribal mistrust, they’re not harmless errors. They’re signals that our societal framework is fraying.
That’s why both the First and Second Amendments matter, not just legally, but symbolically.
The First Amendment ensures that I can ask, “Why are you protesting?” without fear of being arrested, but if the media misrepresents that question as aggression, and the public treats curiosity as threat, then the right exists in name only.
The Second Amendment exists for when the First fails. That’s not hyperbole, that’s history.
You don’t have to look further than 1992 in Los Angeles, or 2020 in Kenosha, to see what happens when order collapses and institutions fail to protect the vulnerable. The right to keep and bear arms is not about cosplay militias or internet fantasies. It’s about responsibility. It’s about the last safeguard of personal liberty and communal stability when everything else goes sideways.
It is a hard truth that rights come with calluses. They come with dirt under the fingernails. They’re not supposed to be comfortable, they’re supposed to be earned, exercised, and preserved with wisdom.
It used to be common sense to respect someone’s right to disagree. It used to be common sense to expect journalists to get the story right. Now, common sense feels like resistance.
And yet, we must persist.
If we lose the ability to speak freely and to defend our right to do so both with words and, if necessary, with the means to protect ourselves, then we lose more than just political ground. We lose the fragile framework that allows people from wildly different backgrounds to live, work, and argue side-by-side without burning the whole thing down.
I won’t apologize for showing up and asking a question. That’s what engaged citizens do. I won’t back down when I’m mislabeled for exercising my rights. That’s what free men do. And I won’t give up on a country that still has more in common than we care to admit, so long as we’re allowed to speak freely and defend what we love.
To those who would silence or smear the voices they disagree with, I have just one bit of advice: Don’t mistake quiet strength for absence. Some of us are still standing. Still watching. Still asking questions.
And we’re not going anywhere.
Mark Maxwell is a U.S. Marine Corps veteran, entrepreneur, and lifelong Texan. He believes in the Constitution, respectful dialogue, and barbecue that doesn’t need sauce.