America again stands on the edge of betrayal, watching mobs assault federal officers while judges call it “restraint.”
This is not new. Between 1876 and 1878, the same script played out as those sworn to uphold the law were branded as tyrants and those undermining it claimed the mantle of freedom. When the federal government lost the will to enforce its own laws, violence filled the vacuum.
After the Civil War, Republican coalitions in the South — freedmen, poor whites, and Northern reformers — were crushed by white Democrats who called themselves “Redeemers.” They promised “home rule” but delivered a racial caste system enforced by terror and political exclusion.
The Redeemers invoked ‘home rule’ to dismantle Reconstruction. Today’s Democratic left invokes ‘human rights’ to paralyze national defense.
The last obstacle to that counterrevolution was federal protection of black voters. During the disputed 1876 election, President Ulysses S. Grant stationed troops at polling sites across the South to deter fraud and Ku Klux Klan violence. Democrats in South Carolina vowed to “wade in blood knee-deep” if necessary to reclaim power.
Those troops were the only shield between freedmen and their former masters. But in the Compromise of 1877, federal forces were withdrawn to buy political peace. Reconstruction governments collapsed, schools for freedmen closed, and voting rights vanished. As W.E.B. Du Bois wrote, “The slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery.”
Southern Democrats soon made that withdrawal permanent. Wrapping themselves in the rhetoric of liberty and “local control,” they pushed the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, criminalizing use of the Army for domestic law enforcement except when Congress expressly authorized it.
The narrative was set: Federal troops at the polls meant “tyranny”; “home rule” meant “harmony.” In truth, the act cemented the collapse of Reconstruction and led to the birth of Jim Crow, which paralyzed federal defense of civil rights for nearly a century.
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Debates over the Posse Comitatus Act dripped with moral inversion. Southern Democrats like Rep. John Atkins of Tennessee and William Kimmel of Maryland denounced President Rutherford B. Hayes as a “monarch” who preferred bullets to ballots. Federal soldiers protecting black voters were smeared as bloodthirsty brutes and “tools of despotism.”
In that twisted language, enforcing the law became tyranny, while mob rule became freedom.
It was early information warfare: delegitimize the protectors, vindicate the aggressors, and freeze lawful authority into submission.
A century and a half later, the pattern repeats. Democrats, left-wing activists, and their media allies now use essentially the same language to delegitimize immigration enforcement. ICE and Border Patrol agents, upholding laws passed by Congress, are branded as “fascists.” Federal defense of government facilities is denounced as “militarization.”
Judges cite the Posse Comitatus Act to block National Guard deployments meant to protect ICE offices from violent assaults. In Illinois, U.S. District Judge April Perry ruled that deploying the Guard could “add fuel to the fire that they started,” claiming no evidence of impending “rebellion.” The ruling came days before No Kings Day demonstrations.
The Department of Homeland Security had extended fencing around its Broadview facility after earlier attacks — rioters hurling fireworks, bottles, and tear gas while local officials looked away. When the DHS finally reinforced its defenses, the courts ordered them torn down.
Since June, ICE and Border Patrol have endured shootings, arson attempts, and coordinated ambushes. In Dallas, a sniper targeted an ICE field office. In suburban Chicago, federal agents were rammed and pinned by cartel-linked drivers before returning fire. Local police en route to assist were told to stand down.
Within hours, left-wing outlets and activist networks declared the clash proof of “authoritarianism.” The strategy is deliberate: manufacture chaos, provoke a lawful response, then cite that response as evidence of tyranny.
This is a textbook reflexive control operation — using perception to paralyze power. The Redeemers of 1878 called federal troops “despots” and “usurpers.” Their descendants call federal agents “fascists.” The aim is identical: Erode public trust in lawful authority and make enforcement politically impossible.
Then, as now, the real fight centers on citizenship itself.
In the 19th century, freed black Americans embodied the principle that allegiance and equality before the law, not race or birth, define membership in the republic. That ideal shattered the old Southern order, so Redeemers destroyed it.
Today, citizenship threatens a different order — the globalist one. Citizenship implies borders, duties, and distinctions. So progressives seek to redefine it as exclusionary or immoral. Illegal aliens become “newcomers.” Enforcing the law becomes oppression. The federal obligation to protect citizens morphs into a liability.
What began as Redeemer propaganda has evolved into a post-national orthodoxy: Sovereignty is shameful, and the citizen must yield to the “world citizen.” The result is the same — federal paralysis, selective law enforcement, and mobs empowered by moral cover.
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The parallels are precise. The Redeemers invoked “home rule” to dismantle Reconstruction; today’s left invokes “human rights” and “de-militarization” to paralyze national defense.
The Posse Comitatus Act was never a sacred constitutional barrier — it was a political tool of retreat. Then it left freedmen defenseless; now it hinders protection of federal agents, citizens, and borders. By turning law into spectacle and restraint into virtue, it leaves our republic unguarded.
History teaches a blunt lesson: Retreat invites terror. When the state retreats, mobs rule. When courts mistake optics for justice, defenders become defendants. The same moral inversion that once enslaved men through “home rule” now threatens to enslave the republic through lawfare.
To survive, America must recover what it lost in 1877 — the courage to act as a nation. Withdrawal is not peace. Compromise, in this instance, is not order. The freedman of this century is the American citizen himself — and the question, once again, is whether the nation that freed him will defend him.
Zohran Mamdani is now the Democrats’ nominee for mayor of New York City. He is also an openly anti-Semitic socialist.
His nomination puts the Democratic Party in a position not unlike the one Republicans faced in 1991, when David Duke — a former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan — became the GOP nominee in Louisiana’s gubernatorial runoff.
Now it’s the Democrats’ turn. They must reject Zohran Mamdani and the hateful, dangerous movement he represents, just as the Republicans did with David Duke.
This is the Democrats’ David Duke moment. And they’re failing the test.
In Louisiana’s 1991 “jungle primary,” the two top vote-getters were:
Duke received only 32% of the vote, but that was enough to advance to the runoff. Although he had run for office several times in the 1980s as a Democrat, Duke ran as a Republican in 1991 — and won the Republican candidacy.
Faced with an impossible choice of backing an unrepentant white supremacist on their party’s ticket, Republicans rallied around Edwards, launching a campaign under the nose-holding slogan: “Vote for the crook — it’s important.”
And it worked. The crook Edwards defeated Duke, 61% to 39%.
That crossover vote was no small feat. This was the early 1990s — a time when Southern Democrats were in full collapse. Just three years earlier, George H.W. Bush beat Michael Dukakis by 10 points in Louisiana. Even the governor at the time, Buddy Roemer, had switched parties and run as a Republican because the Democratic brand was so out of favor.
In fact, bipartisan revulsion at Roemer’s political opportunism contributed to Duke finishing second in the primary. But in the end, Republicans knew what needed to be done. They didn’t like voting for Edwards, but a white supremacist was a nonstarter.
Thirty-four years later, a Jew-hating red is the Democrats’ candidate for mayor of New York City, one of the most prominent political offices in America. This is the Democrats’ David Duke moment.
But instead of rejecting Mamdani — who, like Duke, should have been a washout from the start — prominent Democrats are embracing him.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), for example, told Fox News that Mamdani is the “future” of the Democratic Party.
Mamdani isn’t some garden-variety progressive. He occupies a darker corner of the political spectrum — somewhere between Vladimir Lenin and Hamas. His candidacy should be as repugnant as a KKK grand wizard.
In 2021, he summed up his anti-Israel worldview in one sentence: “There are also other issues that we firmly believe in, whether it’s [boycott, divestment, and sanctions against Israel] or whether it is the end goal of seizing the means of production.”
Mamdani doesn’t just support the BDS movement against Israel. He’s defended calls to “globalize the intifada” — a phrase that means exporting terrorism against Jews to every corner of the world, including the United States.
Mamdani has refused to condemn the global terror campaign against Jews, explaining that globalizing the intifada simply reflects a “desperate desire for equality and equal rights in standing up for Palestinian human rights.”
Then, when Hamas terrorists invaded Israel and slaughtered nearly 1,200 innocents on October 7, 2023, Mamdani condemned Israel, not Hamas.
Imagine a candidate who refused to condemn lynchings. He’d be ostracized on the spot — and rightfully so. But Mamdani cannot bring himself to denounce the murder of Jewish women and children — and Democrat leaders can’t bring themselves to denounce him either.
Domestically, Mamdani is also extraordinarily sympathetic toward Islamic terrorists, having publicly criticized the U.S. government for putting al-Qaeda terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki under surveillance.
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Although Mamdani won the Democratic primary, he is actually an official member of the Democratic Socialists of America. That group’s radical platform includes:
As reported by the Free Press, Mamdani’s social media history is full of disqualifying statements for any serious candidate. A few examples:
For conservatives, it’s tempting to sit back and enjoy the spectacle of Democrats self-destructing. But this is bigger than party politics.
Both major parties have a responsibility to reject mainstreaming communism and Islamism in the United States.
In 1991, Republicans chose principle over party. They helped defeat a candidate who represented the worst of their history.
Now it’s the Democrats’ turn. They must reject Zohran Mamdani and the hateful, dangerous movement he represents, just as the Republicans did with David Duke.
Because, as the bumper sticker said in 1991, “It’s important.”
In response to widespread rioting and domestic disorder in Los Angeles, President Trump ordered the deployment of National Guard units. More than 700 U.S. Marines from the Air Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms were also mobilized on Monday to protect federal property around the city.
As expected, critics pounced. They claim Trump’s orders violate American tradition — calling them anti-constitutional, anti-federal, and an authoritarian misuse of executive power. They say Trump is turning the military into a domestic police force.
In moments like this, the republic must defend itself.
But that argument isn’t just wrong — it’s nonsense on stilts.
The U.S. Army Historical Center has published three comprehensive volumes documenting the repeated and lawful use of federal military forces in domestic affairs since the founding of the republic. From the Whiskey Rebellion to civil rights enforcement, history shows that federal troops have long been a constitutional backstop when local authorities fail to maintain order.
Certainly, the use of military forces within U.S. borders must be limited and considered carefully. But the Constitution explicitly grants this authority. Article IV, Section 4 states: “The United States shall guarantee to every state in this union a republican form of government, and shall protect each of them against invasion; and on application of the legislature, or of the executive (when the legislature cannot be convened), against domestic violence.”
That clause isn’t a suggestion — it’s a command. A republican government exists to safeguard life, liberty, and property. The First Amendment protects the right to peaceably assemble and petition the government, but it does not shield acts of arson, looting, or assault. When rioters threaten the public, federal intervention becomes not just permissible but, in this instance, necessary.
Article II empowers the president, as commander in chief of the Army, Navy, and National Guard (when called into federal service), to act decisively against both foreign and domestic threats. That includes quelling insurrections when state leaders fail to uphold public order.
The National Guard is not the “militia” the founders discussed. That distinction was settled with the passage of the Dick Act in 1903, which clarified the Guard’s federal identity in relation to state control. Since then, the Guard has operated under dual federal and state authority — with federal control taking precedence when activated. Once federalized, the National Guard becomes an extension of the U.S. military.
Congress codified this authority in 1807 with the Insurrection Act. It authorizes the president to use military force when ordinary judicial proceedings fail. This provision enabled presidents throughout history to deploy troops against domestic unrest. During the 1950s and ’60s, Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy used it to enforce desegregation orders in the South.
In 1992, President George H.W. Bush relied on the same statute to deploy Army and Marine forces alongside the California National Guard during the L.A. riots following the Rodney King trial verdict. That was done without sparking cries of dictatorship.
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Those accusing Trump of violating norms by acting over a governor’s objection should revisit 1957. After Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus (D) defied federal orders to desegregate Little Rock Central High School, President Eisenhower federalized the Arkansas National Guard and sent in the 101st Airborne Division. Democratic Sen. Richard Russell of Georgia decried the move, comparing the troops to Hitler’s storm troopers — a reminder that hysterical analogies are nothing new.
Americans have sought to limit military involvement in domestic life. The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 was designed to do just that — restrict the use of federal troops in civil law enforcement without explicit authorization. But even that law has historical nuance.
The concept of “posse comitatus” comes from English common law. It refers to the authority of sheriffs to summon local citizens to restore order. In early American history, federal troops often supported U.S. Marshals. They enforced the Fugitive Slave Act, stanched the bleeding in Kansas, and helped capture John Brown at Harpers Ferry.
After the Civil War, the Army played a key role in enforcing Reconstruction and suppressing the Ku Klux Klan under the Force Acts. Southern Democrats opposed this use of federal power. But by the 1870s, even Northern lawmakers grew uneasy when soldiers were ordered to suppress railroad strikes under direction of state and local officials.
The Army eventually welcomed Posse Comitatus. Being placed under local political control compromised military professionalism and exposed troops to partisan misuse. Officers feared that domestic policing would corrupt the armed forces.
I’ve long argued for restraint in using military power within U.S. borders. That principle still matters. But lawlessness, when left unchecked, can and will destroy republican government. And when local leaders fail to act — or worse, encourage disorder — the federal government must step in.
President Trump has both the constitutional and statutory authority to deploy troops in response to the violence unfolding in Los Angeles. Whether he should do so depends on prudence and necessity. But the idea that such action is unprecedented or somehow illegal has no basis in law or history.
If mayors and governors abdicate their duty, Washington must not. The defense of law-abiding citizens cannot hinge on the whims of ideologues or the cowardice of local officials. And in moments like this, the republic must defend itself.
Restrictive immigration policies need not be racist — indeed, when properly framed and executed, they can be the very means of lowering the temperature of societal strife.
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