Trump should look to Washington and the Whisky Rebellion for Inspiration when Dealing with Rioters...

While Donald Trump famously does not drink, alcohol has always played a role in American life, usually ancillary but occasionally central. He could take a lesson from an early instance where it played a central role and how it was handled by our greatest president.

During and after the Revolutionary War the economy of America was a wreck as prices of products it exported, fish, lumber, tobacco, and cotton, collapsed with the removal of the British market.  It’s estimated that between 1774 and 1790 the economy declined by 41 per cent.

The country ended the war heavily in debt.  The federal government owed $54 million and the states together owed an additional $21 million. During the war both tried to print their way out of their difficulties. It didn’t work.

Even after the war under the Articles of Confederation there was no relief as the federal government was weak and the states saw themselves as competitors in many economic matters.

In 1787 the Founding Fathers met in Philadelphia and hammered out the Constitution that we still use today.  It created a stronger central government, but one that still had difficulties with finances.  And that’s where the alcohol comes in. In 1791 Congress passed the “Whiskey Tax” which was an attempt to raise funds to pay off the debt run up during and after the war.  This per gallon excise tax was levied on domestic whiskey, a product many farmers, particularly western farmers, produced from their excess grain. 

The western farmers were unhappy because most were small producers and, unlike the large eastern producers, they couldn’t use efficiencies of size to minimize the impact, therefore making their offerings relatively less competitive. At the same time, the tax had to be paid in specie (gold and silver coins) something that was rare in the entire nation and in particularly so in the west. Finally, due to the lack of a viable currency, many workers in the west took whiskey as their pay, which was now taxed!

All of this combined to create a storm we call the Whiskey Rebellion.  By 1794 tempers were flaring in the west and outbreaks of violence began, involving a few thousand people across the west. Finally, that July when a west Pennsylvania tax collector’s home was set fire by 500 armed men, George Washington decided it was time to act. He sent negotiators to see if they could negotiate a solution. But he didn’t dither to see if negotiations would work.  Simultaneously he requested militia from the states and then personally led the 13,000 strong man army to face the troublemakers. The negotiations failed but with the prospect of facing an overwhelming force led by the Commander in Chief, the “rebels” faded away before Washington even arrived. There was no confrontation and when all was said and done four rebels died and there were two casualties among civilians.

Some of the leaders were roused from their beds in the middle of the night, marched barefoot through the mud and the rain and held in animal pens on their way back to Philadelphia. Then “The captured rebels were paraded down Broad Street being 'humiliated, bedraggled, [and] half-starved...”  Eventually 150 men were arrested, 20 were tried and two were convicted and sentenced to death, but given that one was charged with simple battery and the other with theft, Washington eventually pardoned both. 

The newly formed federal government had shown that it had both the means and the will to enforce federal law and hold those responsible accountable.  Washington’s focus on assuring a robust response on issues involving a clearly defined federal power set a precedent that survives to this day.  In principle, that is.  In practice, at least as it comes to immigration, not so much.

Donald Trump should look to the precedent that George Washington set and act accordingly.  Washington utilized state militias to quell the violence.  He not only had the people directly involved in the violence arrested, but he had others who facilitated it arrested as well.  Although Washington did not have to use his 13,000 troops in actual combat, the fact that he had them and demonstrated his willingness to use them was sufficient to end the insurrection.

Trump should do exactly the same thing. When local authorities won’t or can’t stop the violence, Trump should immediately harness the National Guard. In addition, he should put rioters on notice that the soldiers are not there to exchange pleasantries.  For this he could and should use the words of Sheriff Wayne Ivey of Brevard County, Florida: “If you throw a brick, firebomb or point a gun at one of our deputies, we will be notifying your family where to collect your remains at, because we will kill you, graveyard dead.” Trump should be unambiguously clear that violence towards law enforcement, citizens and property will not be tolerated.

At the same time, like Washington, Trump should identify the people who are behind the violence. The people paying for the signs. The people paying anarchists to go out and riot. The people paying for bricks and rocks to be conveniently located near hot spots. The people paying for the masks and other riot gear. 

And most of this will not be individuals. As dataRepublican (small r) has demonstrated American taxpayers are inadvertently funding much of this via NGOs facilitated by Democrats and the rest of the swamp. These leftist, Communist, anti-American organizations, are, under the guise of “charity” fueling a real insurrection and invasion of the United States. 

And Trump should be ruthless. These people, particularly the people behind the scenes, are far more dangerous to America than any external enemy.  They have academia, the media and half the ruling class on their side. This is where the tire hits the road. They should spend decades in prison and emerge penniless, with whatever assets they have seized to pay for the damage they inflicted on the country. 

Instead of dialing things back as he quizzically just announced, Trump needs to turbo charge his response and let it be known that the federal government will not tolerate a violent insurrection.

Washington harnessed an army of 13,000 to demonstrate his intent on restoring order when the population was under 4 million. With 350 million I’m sure Trump can find the men to demonstrate his point.

He should be prepared for a Kent State like episode, or many of them, and be prepared to stand his ground. The reality is, if he does not quell this, we will have another Summer of Love like 2020 with its consequent aftermath.

And what is that aftermath? A bloodbath. Take the murders in the three years following the BLM rioting of 2014. After declining for a decade, in three years murders would climb 26% nationwide, resulting in at least 8,000 more murders than would have otherwise been seen.  Then after the “Summer of Love” in 2020, the year ended up with a 32% jump in murders in a single year, adding another 5,000 murders than would have been expected.  That’s a lot more blood than Kent State. 

So, Donald Trump’s job as president is not to placate the leftist, anti-American Communists and anarchists who seek to abet this invasion, sow discord and delegitimize, destabilize, and ultimately derail his presidency. But this is not about Donald Trump. It’ about America and the American citizens who voted to take back their country.  It is they to whom he needs to answer, not those who oppose him simply because he seeks to make America America again. 

Follow me on X at @ImperfectUSA

Originally published on June 14, 2025

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2025/06/as_leftists_riot_trump_should_look_to_washington_and_the_whisky_rebellion_for_inspiration.html

Secession Is A Radical Solution That Sadly Doesn’t Seem So Radical Any More

Some things in life are constant. My entire life America has been one of those things.  Despite Vietnam, Watergate, Iran Contra, the Dot Com bubble, 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, the Great Recession and more, the United States has been constant.  America, rife with internal conflicts, differing opinions and more than a few lying politicians was always the land of freedom, the land of opportunity, and the land of endless possibilities.  America and freedom were like the earth below us and the sun and the stars above… constants.    

But constant is relative…  Wait long enough and the earth will be gone. Wait long enough and the sun and the stars will be gone. So too with nations. Ronald Reagan knew this.  He said:  Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.  That generation is upon us and we are most certainly watching in real time as American freedom is extinguished, and with it America.

America was fundamentally built on freedoms guaranteed by our Constitution.  Freedom of speech, religion, the right to peaceably to assemble and to petition the Government.  But it’s not just the Constitution itself that makes America.  It’s ideas that flow from it and our history.  Free markets, private property, entrepreneurship, 4^th of July, baseball, high school debate team, cars, suburbs, bake sales, Thanksgiving dinner, spelling bees, Pledge of Allegiance, Christmas antlers,  the National Anthem and more.    

All of that, both the actual rights and the ideas beyond them all are under attack in America of 2021.  Whether petty tyrants using the Covid hysteria to eviscerate our freedoms of religion and assembly and to crush our businesses or social media oligarchs shutting down debate in the 21^st century town square or education departments causing Martin Luther King to spin in his grave as they abandon his dream, the America of Norman Rockwell paintings is being torn apart idea by idea by idea.

This past summer Americans were helpless as cities from coast to coast burned in response to the killing of George Floyd and they were told the violence was understandable and “mostly peaceful protests”.  This past year many Americans saw their lives upended as their jobs or businesses were destroyed, their families turned into strangers and churches and schools turned into ghost towns as a result of a disease with a 99.99% survival rate, but we were told that America was facing the gravest public health threat in history.  Now we’re watching as children are taught that math is racist, that hard work is racist, and there is no difference between boys and girls and we’re told that all of this is healthy and reasonable.

At the same time, we’ve watched our history upended as we see monuments to our heroes, from Columbus to Washington to Grant and Lincoln to Booker T. Washington to Reagan toppled in the name of racism!  We’ve watched the indoctrination of grievance as the defining characteristic of American life.  We’ve witnessed the politicization of every single aspect of American society, where everything from sitcoms to sports to sex no longer have intrinsic value on their own, but rather have become mere Rorschach tests for measuring one’s degree of submission to the new normal. 

America has become a nation where objective reality no longer matters, where the free exchange of ideas is no longer allowed and where the exercise of an individual’s rights are tolerated only to the degree that they do not hurt the feelings of some aggrieved victim class.  America has become a bizzarro world where everything from science to math and history to law are no longer constants upon which society rests but rather malleable frameworks for the destruction of everything that does not comport with todays’ woke mores. 

And so it is thorough this looking glass one wonders what is the solution?  In 2016 Americans went to the ballot box and said they’d had enough of the perversion of everything ostensibly American into a cancer on the history of the world and elected a leader who was unabashedly patriotic.  After four years of constant, relentless lies about said leader they returned to the ballot box and reelected the man who was seeking to upend the demonization of America, only to have the election stolen under the cover of the night.  That theft was enabled by the fiction of an existential threat to life on earth posed by a novel virus. Americans went to the ballot box and their will was thwarted.

Rather than set the nation afire, jilted voters looked to the courts for a Constitutional remedy.  A split Supreme Court had demurred from solving the problem before the election but after the election had the opportunity to revisit the question before the votes were certified.  Again they demurred. Once the fraudulent administration was in place the Court had one last opportunity to address the fraud once and for all, and again chose not to act.

So we have a circumstance where citizens go to the polls only to watch those votes stolen.  They then petition the nation’s highest court for redress and are rebuffed.  As they watch the cabal who perpetrated the theft work to institutionalize the very tools with which they purloined the election in the first place, what are citizens who revere the Constitution and love liberty supposed to do?

Do they stand by and watch as what’s left of their country is taken over by those for whom freedom and rule of law are simply obstacles to the permanent domination over the nation?  Become slaves on a modern day plantation where Silicon Valley, Wall Street and Washington are the masters and the woke anarchists are the overseers who keep everyone in line?  Riot in the streets like BLM and Antifa have done so often?

Or they could pursue secession, where the woke are welcome to the coasts while the heartland and the south choose freedom and the Constitution…  It is indeed a radical notion, but the constant of the free America most of us knew is gone so perhaps the time has come...  When all conventional Constitutional avenues have been impeded, when opponents seek to eliminate citizens’ Constitutional rights and thwart the language of the document itself, what other choice is left?  We can accept the slow death of the Republic as the gangrene of wokness starves the body politic of the blood of freedom, or amputate the cancerous limbs and allow freedom to flow once again through the veins of a nation defined by liberty.  The left has made the radical normal.  Secession is a radical solution that sadly doesn’t seem so radical any more.