It’s happening again. Violence in the streets. Protesters clashing with police. A president threatening to send in the troops.
And once again, America is being told to pick a side: Are you with “law and order” or “the resistance”? Tear gas or hashtags? Trump or chaos?
It’s a false choice — but it’s one we keep falling for.
That isn’t to say you shouldn’t pick sides in the larger culture war — or that we should fall prey to “both-sides-ism.” But when it comes specifically to what is happening right now in Los Angeles, we don’t have to choose between anarchy and authoritarianism.
A free society needs both liberty and order — rights, yes, but rights with responsibilities. Freedom with guardrails. That’s the spirit behind Edmund Burke’s idea of “ordered liberty.”
It’s a concept that demands balance. And yet here we are, again, in a moment that insists we pick one side or the other, no middle ground allowed. Today’s politics operates in binaries: for or against, red or blue, patriots or traitors.
Refusing to play this game, increasingly, is treated as moral weakness — as a cop-out. But that’s the brilliance of Burke’s formulation: It resists simplicity and mocks tribal reflexes.
Yes, the government must protect us from violent mobs. But just as surely, we must be protected from an overbearing government that incites them. Either extreme — lawless streets or lawless state power — can strip away liberty and leave the Constitution bleeding out in public view.
So what does that have to do with Los Angeles?
You can support the right to protest and still expect demonstrators not to torch cars, hurl bricks or wave foreign flags. You can believe in secure borders and still think deploying active-duty Marines to peacetime L.A. is an absurd overreach.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth for my liberal friends: A nation has the right to enforce immigration laws.
But for my conservative friends: How it does so — the tone, tools and legal safeguards — matters just as much.
Leadership in moments like this means calming tensions and restoring order without cruelty. But that’s not Trump’s instinct. He’s going out of his way to stoke anxiety and escalate conflict with his displays of dominance.
And speaking of displays: The Los Angeles protests are unfolding as Trump prepares for a military parade in D.C. on his birthday. (He says it’s to honor the Army. Sure. And people go to Hooters just for the wings.)
This isn’t policy — it’s pageantry. Xi Jinping rolls tanks, Putin shows off missiles. Trump gets a teleprompter, a stage and the Pentagon as his party planner.
If it ended there, fine. But let’s be honest: You don’t have to be paranoid to wonder whether the situation in Los Angeles is softening the public for something worse — a normalization of military crackdowns on domestic dissent.
Would Trump declare martial law and refuse to leave office? Maybe not. But would he relish a loyal military prepared to suppress his critics? That’s not exactly a stretch. He’s already floated ideas far outside the constitutional lines — and found a base willing to cheer him on.
And here’s the kicker: He recently pardoned the Jan. 6 rioters — the ones who smeared feces in the Capitol and beat police officers with flagpoles — and now wants to send troops into L.A. The irony writes itself.
If Trump has achieved anything, it’s this: He’s turned much of America into tribal hypocrites. The same act is judged as treason or patriotism depending on who’s doing it.
But while that’s true of partisans, it’s not true of most people. The average American watching the footage — the fires, the shouting, the Mexican flags — may understandably lean toward order. Trump, as always, is savvy about choosing unsympathetic foils.
Of course it would be wrong and stupid to side with a violent mob. But those of us who deeply value liberty should also be able to imagine a time when we could be cast as the “mob” — when patriotic dissent is recast as sedition, and protest becomes a pretext for crackdowns.
That’s why the principle of ordered liberty matters. The far left often champions liberty without order. The Trumpian right demands order without liberty — and only for their enemies.
So where does that leave the rest of us?
If you’re watching what’s happening in Los Angeles with some ambivalence, that’s a good sign. It means you’re still thinking. Because to fully side with either the rioters or the National Guard phalanx is to give in to ideological cosplay: simplistic, self-satisfying and fundamentally dishonest.
So congratulations — if you’ve read this far, you haven’t surrendered to the cheap thrill of tribal certainty. You’re resisting the pull of performance politics in favor of something harder and more important: thinking for yourself. And in times like these, that may be the most radical form of protest there is.
Matt K. Lewis is a columnist, podcaster and author of the books “Too Dumb to Fail” and “Filthy Rich Politicians.”