Army Bob: Federal troops were called before

by Robert M. Traxler

Riots continue in LA; is a new “summer of love” underway? Well, in excess of a billion dollars of damage and dozens dead during the last summer of love in 2020 was a highlight of the American demonstrations.

History is repeating itself yet once again; a commentator on MSNBC stated that President Trump is the first President to use federal troops to enforce federal law in a state without the governor’s approval, leading us to say ignorance comes in all sizes and shapes.

There have been several significant moments in U.S. history when federal troops were deployed to enforce federal law in states that resisted it. These actions were often controversial and usually involved major constitutional, civil rights, or public order issues. Let’s look at a few:

• The Whiskey Rebellion (1794). Farmers in western Pennsylvania rebelled against a federal excise tax on whiskey. The people burned buildings, assaulted federal employees, burned their homes, and tarred and feathered them. In response, President Washington led an army of mostly National Guard troops 13,000 strong to repress the rebels.

• The Civil War is our worst and most costly war (7,000,000 dead if we norm it for today’s population). The Civil War was the ultimate use of federal authority against the states’ objections. 

• After the Civil War federal troops were used to enforce federal law and state law. Federal soldiers were used to guard voting places, allowing African Americans to vote, helping to ensure the passage of the 14^th and 15^th Amendments. Later southern representatives and senators caused the Posse Comitatus Act to be passed, a law restricting the use of federal troops to enforce state law (voting rights).     

• In 1957, President Dwight David Eisenhower used federal troops (101st Airborne) to enforce federal law against the objections of the governor of Arkansas to desegregate southern schools.

• In 1962, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy used federal troops in Mississippi to enforce federal law and desegregate schools; federal troops also protected lives and property against what today would be called “mostly peaceful” demonstrations.     

• In 1963 Alabama Governor George Wallace attempted to block federal law and President Kennedy again use federal troops to enforce federal law.  

Other times in the 1960s federal troops, marshals and FBI agents were used to enforce federal law against the wishes of governors.

The “mostly peaceful” anti-federal law demonstrations in Los Angeles burned cars, looted stores and assaulted police officers. If this is “peaceful,” one can only wonder what a violent demonstration would look like to our media. 

Seeing hundreds of people waving Mexican flags and spitting on and burning American flags should cause all of us to ask, what is going on and who is leading it? Folks leave Mexico and other nations to illegally break into our nation, only to wave the flag of the nation they fled.

These folks who are so proud of their nations need to return to them. A few in our media are even referring to the Mexican flag wavers, who are burning, looting and assaulting soldiers, Marines and federal police officers as patriotic? Just how that works is a mystery to most of us, but political correctness dictates we cannot openly ask. Why local law enforcement officers were for a time ordered under penalty of losing their jobs not to aid federal police officers in jeopardy is also a travesty that we cannot question.  

Sanctuary states and cities allowing refuge from federal law are unlawful, but our media tells us they are heroic bastions against federal law, calling federal enforcement agencies fascists and Nazis and placing themselves in the same category as the anti-civil rights activists of the 1960s and 1970s.

The mayor of Los Angeles is even saying that the federal government is taking away the authority of state and local law; it is a test case to see if they can do it, Madam Mayor, has been tested and upheld as correct. Interesting that she is an African American, and most test cases upholding federal laws over state laws were civil rights cases.

A simple solution is for the folks so proud of their nations of origin who have disdain for our nation to return to Mexico and other nations. And we ask why President Trump’s slogan is America first? My opinion.