President Trump is facing an intense and organized opposition PR campaign, attacking him for federalizing the California National Guard to restore law and order in the “City of Angels.” I offer a few thoughts to provide perspective:

California governor Newsom, 22 other Democratic governors, and the chorus of Democratic Senators and Congressmen falling over each other to condemn this event want to pretend that everything was “normal” until Saturday when Donald Trump set off a “crisis.” Think about that: Their version of “normalcy” assumes that waves of millions of illegals arriving over decades does not comprise a “crisis.” They see a “crisis” in trying to restore legality.

The same cabal keeps repeating the mantra of “peaceful protests.” For those of us with historical memories beyond the last news cycle, these “peaceful protests” look a lot like the 2020 summer of arson, mobilized to advance an ideological program. For the record, “protests” are people assembled or marching in a defined space, waving their signs and chanting their slogans. Burning cars is not “peaceful protest.” Blocking other people’s use of public highways is not “peaceful protest.” Trying to block federal law enforcement from doing its job is not “peaceful protest.” It’s obstruction. It’s civil unrest. And no society based on rule of law can tolerate that.

Behind these rationalizations is a bizarre notion of passivity that is really passive aggression. California, like other “sanctuary” jurisdictions, refuses cooperation with federal immigration law enforcement. That proposition should be debatable but, for the moment, let’s assume it dato non concesso. Such declined cooperation is passive: you do nothing. In fact, however, such jurisdictions are doing something. They are collaborating with the targets of federal immigration law enforcement to block the latter. It happens when “protestors” try bodily to interfere with arrests. It happens when judges use atypical procedures to spirit illegal criminals away from feds. It happens when the “passive” local law enforcement allows local civil order to break down sufficiently to prevent federal law enforcement.

That last point needs to be fleshed out clearly. It’s one thing to say “we won’t cooperate with federal immigration law enforcement.” It’s something else completely to say “we will allow a protest situation that gets out of hand to stay that way because the protestors were motivated by opposition to federal immigration law enforcement.” Tolerating temporary conditions that disrupt federal enforcement, knowing thereby that immigration enforcement is impeded, is collusion in tolerated anarchy to nullify federal law. That is much more than “passive resistance.”

The basic requirement of any society is always to protect the safety and security of its members. Always. Allowing that safety and security to be frayed, even temporarily, in the name of synergizing with some other policy position does not sanitize that basic abdication of fundamental civil responsibility on the part of those governing. No policy option excuses a government from keeping basic order necessary for rule of law (and law enforcement) to function. It’s an Alice in Wonderland world where Los Angeles Mayor Bass brands as “lawless” federal law enforcement and Presidential prerogatives to intervene, not the paralysis her “protestors” try to interpose on them.

But when that happens, federal law enforcement — which the “sanctuary” jurisdictions claim should be doing the immigration control local conditions block — have to two choices: withdraw or assume the role of restoring overall law and order the locals have abandoned. The first would be the Left’s preference, which represents de facto nullification of federal law in that place. The second requires feds taking over the function of restoring basic civil order, which is what President Trump sought to do through federalizing the California National Guard.

Leaders do not exacerbate crises, they seek to deescalate them. But there’s a danger when perennial deescalation degenerates into acquiescence, into the anarchist’s veto. Constant détente does not build a secure or just society. It simply creates a nonconfrontational banana republic, an outcome that in the long run is probably more inimical to building a secure or just society.

One other note I’ll add on the L.A. situation.: Earlier videos showed blockaders and arsonists waving Mexican flags while burning an American one. I’ll not comment on the paradox of waving a foreign flag of a country you don’t want to live in, in the country you are but apparently don’t like living in. But, most recently, leftists are spreading the word on social media to ditch the red-white-and-green for the red-white-and-blue. It’ll make friends and influence people.

I say, Wait a minute. Old Glory is not a prop in your political kabuki theater. It’s not interchangeable with another drapeau du jour as the symbolic shield for an ideological program and/or the subversion of the legal system that flag represents.