Marc Thiessen presents, without endorsing, the case for allowing the social experiment in lawlessness to proceed:

Trump declared that enough is enough and that he and Attorney General William P. Barr will soon unveil a plan to “to straighten things out.” But maybe he shouldn’t. The genius of our federal system is that states and localities serve as what the late Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis called laboratories of democracy that can “try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.” Right now, many of America’s cities are conducting social experiments in lawlessness, showing the rest of the country what happens when local leaders join calls to “defund the police” and cower in the face of violence.

There is an argument for just letting those experiments play out. After all, we are told elections have consequences. Well, the people in those cities voted for weak Democratic mayors and city council members. Maybe if they experience the consequences of incompetent Democratic leadership, they’ll do what New Yorkers did in the 1990s and vote in tough-on-crime Republicans to restore law and order.

Or they can move. As Milton Friedman explained in “Capitalism and Freedom,” the beauty of our system of dispersed power is that, “if I do not like what my local community does … I can move to another local community. … If I do not like what my state does, I can move to another. [But] if I do not like what Washington imposes, I have few alternatives in this world of jealous nations.” In recent years, growing numbers of Americans quit high-tax blue states such as California for low-tax red states like Texas. If disastrous fiscal policies can spark this kind of migration, maybe disastrous policing policies will do the same.

Of course, the counterargument is: What about the people in Portland, Seattle and other cities where violence is out of hand who did not vote for feckless Democrats? Why should they be subjected to violence? Moreover, although wealthier residents may be able to pick up and leave, the poorer citizens of these cities who depend on social assistance and public housing don’t have the resources to do so. And what about small business owners who have poured their life savings into enterprises that have been looted and vandalized? If they pick up and leave, they lose everything.

It’s unfair to leave these Americans defenseless. And it’s arguably the president’s responsibility to do something about it.

When I consult my inner Black Shirt, I am inclined to favor a massive and merciless Federal crackdown on the enemies of civilization.  Criminals are emboldened when they get away with their crimes. Priceless artifacts of our cultural heritage are being destroyed before our eyes, and it will only get worse if the miscreants aren't stopped with whatever brutality is necessary.  But then I remind myself of the articles I have written favoring federalism. Let the fools in blue states and leftist-dominated cities run their social experiments!  Amendment X of the U. S. Constitution:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited to it by the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the People.

It's a nice little political aporia we've got going here. States rights? Or Big Daddy applying the rod of discipline to the likes of morons such as Lori 'I need a haircut'  Lightfoot (Chicago), Jenny 'Summer of Love' Durkan (Seattle), and Comrade Bozo de Blasio (New Dork City), to mention just three.

But in the end we must look to our own health, well-being, and virtue. The Founders understood that it is the virtue of the people that is the ultimate support of the Republic. What can an individual do? Speak out, if you can muster the civil courage to do so in the teeth of the vicious anti-free-speech cancel-cultural Left. Vote, but never for any Democrat. And don't throw away your vote on unelectable third-party losertarian jokers. Defund or rather don't fund the Left, including the Roman Catholic Church and almost all universities. Vote with your feet and with your wallet. Lay in a righteous supply of tools of survival. Home-school your children. Build vast hard-copy libraries to keep high culture safe from the barbarians. Buy gold and that other precious metal, Pb.

Look to the future, both here below, and beyond time's horizon.  Hope for the best; prepare for the worst. Be of good cheer and keep yourself in shape in mind and body. Long live the Republic!