From LA to BLM to Today: What Happens When Rule of Law Breaks Down

You can call them “protests” if you want. You can parse words. You can say that the majority of people are peaceful. But when you’re watching police precincts go up in flames during the summer of 2020, and private cars torched in the streets of Los Angeles today—it’s pretty clear this is something more.

We are seeing the same pattern we saw in 2020 during the BLM riots. Trump is President. The media is starving for ratings, is broadly left-leaning and anti-Trump, and we haven’t seen a good rage-filled romp in a while. So predictably, we see riots. Errrr, sorry—“mostly peaceful protests”—that burn the U.S. flag and feature flags of foreign nations. When precincts are set ablaze, retail stores looted, and highways shut down—that’s not peaceful protest.

What’s worse is that the media, many politicians, and the justice system have let it happen. They have rationalized it, excused it, even glorified it. Few were arrested in 2020. Fewer still were convicted. The message was clear: if your cause is politically favored, anarchy is tolerable.

In contrast, COVID lockdown protests—many of which were calm, reasoned, and grounded in clear legal objections to government overreach—were ruthlessly shut down. Fines, arrests, suppression of speech. Why? Because those protesters were generally law-abiding citizens who believed in the system. They weren’t lighting fires. They weren’t smashing windows. They weren’t part of the political narrative the media and institutions wanted to promote. And that is why their dissent had to be crushed.

And then came January 6th. My most controversial take? January 6th was a predictable reaction to the double standard set during BLM. People saw that mass protests and riots went largely unpunished. They saw politicians kneeling in solidarity with activists while cities burned. The Capitol breach, while unlawful and wrong, came from a mindset shaped by this permissive environment. If “protest” meant storming public spaces and causing chaos for a political cause, why wouldn’t they believe the same tactics were allowed?

Fast forward to today. Los Angeles is once again burning.

And beneath it all is a deeper fracture: a growing abandonment of rule of law. Judges are blocking federal immigration policy—not because it clearly violates laws passed by Congress, but because they disagree with the policy, and so temporary restraining orders are the order of the day. And when Trump attempts to implement remittance fees on foreign workers who send billions out of the country—again, controversial but well within the legitimate purview of a sovereign nation to control capital flows, protect its economy, and discourage illegal immigration (which judges have been hamstringing through other efforts)—the street-level response is organized protests, masks, helmets, and riots.

So here is the question no one in power wants to confront:

When cities burn, is this democracy at work—or is it the collapse of the very system that makes democracy possible?

And what is the proper response?

Should the federal government bring in the National Guard, even the Marines if necessary? Is this a state sovereignty issue—where local officials must restore order—or a federal responsibility when the basic rights of citizens (to safety, property, mobility) are being violated en masse?

We’re reaching an inflection point. If political violence is normalized as “part of the process,” there is no limiting principle. If judges substitute personal ideology for enforcement of duly passed laws, the system unravels. Here’s an uncomfortable truth: in the Greater Los Angeles area, there are roughly 18 million people. As many as 1.8 million are undocumented. That’s a lot of people to control if things get out of control.

There is one path forward: enforce the law. Consistently. Regardless of politics, race, class, or cause. Rioting cannot be permitted under the false flag of “protest.” Judicial activism must be constrained to the rule of law. Political leaders must defend civil order, not flirt with chaos when it suits them.

Because history is clear: when rule of law breaks down, the republic soon follows.

And if we can’t restore equal enforcement soon, we should not be surprised when the next wave of unrest is even more widespread—and far harder to contain.