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

If The "Peaceful Protesters" of Antifa and BLM Really Had The Courage of Their Convictions...

For the last two months we’ve been watching as BLM and Antifa have knocked over statues, defaced monuments and churches and set fire to basically anything they can get their hands on. St. Louis had to go because he led the Crusades. Christopher Columbus has to go because he opened the door to colonizing a new world. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson have to go because they owned slaves. Fredrick Douglas and Ulysses S. Grant and Teddy Roosevelt and Jesus Christ had to go because… never mind.

And it’s not just statues that are under fire. There’s Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben, Eskimo Pies, Mrs. Butterworth and the girl from Land O' Lakes butter. There’s the NFL’s Redskins, the TV show Cops, the National Anthem, Goya foods, and basically all the police.

What started out as protests against the killing of George Floyd has metastasized into a battle against everything American, everything capitalist and anything that is not sufficiently woke.

Once can certainly appreciate those sentiments because the United States has obviously been a plague on humanity. America was built on land stolen from the Native Americans. The country had slavery from the beginning and Jim Crow laws until the 1960s. As a result, blacks are disproportionately represented in the justice system and those of European descent enjoy white privilege. Anything below a living wage is basically slave labor. College and healthcare are human rights and should not be the kinds of things that Americans should have to pay for, or the kinds of things people can make a profit off of. Some people have more money than they need while others don’t have enough to feed their families. And perhaps most of all, we elected Donald Trump as our president...

If the “peaceful protesters” who are telling us that capitalism needs to go and the United States is the problem had real principles, they would take their demands to the next level. It’s not enough to boycott Goya foods or MyPillow.com or Hobby Lobby. No, if these activists really wanted to show the world that it can do without capitalism and the United States, they should refrain from using anything that American capitalism has produced.

Twitter - Gone. Apple. Gone. Air Conditioning - Gone. Facebook- Gone. Netflix - Gone. McDonalds - Gone. Google - Gone. Cell phones - Gone. Uber - Gone. Call of Duty - Gone. Flight - Gone. Amazon - Gone. Quicksilver - Gone. Nike - Gone. Starbucks - Gone. Fortnite - Gone. Supreme - Gone. X Box - Gone. Batman - Gone. North Face - Gone. Elevators - Gone. CNN - Gone. Not to mention staples like Coke and Pepsi and McDonald's and Frito Lay and Disney and countless others.

If the goal is to tell us that capitalism is bad and should be destroyed, then doesn’t logic demand that the fruits of the imperialist, racist, sexist American capitalist system be obliterated? Isn’t using an iPhone or wearing a Supreme sweat shirt or Nike shoes the watered down equivalent of using the data from Nazi experiments on prisoners to develop new medicines?

Do these “activists” have the courage of their own convictions? Are they really ready to destroy American capitalism and everything that it’s created? If they want to burn the system down and replace it, then they should say so and start living a life without its fruits as an example to others. If their goal however is to continue to enjoy the fruits of the capitalist system but just steal the profits or take the ownership, they are not the freedom fighters they style themselves to be, they are not heroes of the downtrodden seeking to destroy the racist oppressive system of America, but rather, they are in fact simply spoiled, envious, sociopathic thieves who want to take what others have built and use it for their own purposes. They are nothing more than common criminals who covet their neighbor’s wares and seek to exercise power over them… and everyone in the country while they’re at it. George Orwell recognized this in 1984: “We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power.”

Vietnam War Playbook Repeats Itself In American Cities...

Sometimes it’s difficult to recognize that history is being written while you are in the middle of it actually taking place. Such is I think the situation we are in the middle of today with the riots associated with the murder of George Floyd.

Probably no sentient person in the country would have condoned what we saw on that video as the breath was literally pressed out of Mr. Floyd. On the contrary, almost every single person who responded, black, white, police, civilian, politician or guy on the street expressed revulsion for the officer’s conduct. Thankfully, from the moment that video was shared, the wheels of justice were indeed turning, with all four officers being fired immediately and culminating in the primary officer being arrested within days.

Despite this, protests began, followed by looting and then riots. None of those things are surprising given the media’s glee at any opportunity to use anecdotal evidence to try and convince blacks that they are victims and that the police are out to get them.  It's all in furtherance of media / Democrat’s default narrative that America is a racist nation. Mix Black Lives Matter with the Bernie Bros of Antifa and you have a rather predictable combustible setting. Anytime you have large groups of young people who feel the government is their enemy, it's difficult to keep the Molotov Cocktails in their bottles.

None of that is new… but what is new is police chiefs and officers and mayors kneeling with and embracing protesters, as if the idea of “If we just understand their pain” will turn everything down to simmer and will bring about peaceful coexistence. I doubt it. This is a moment in time not unlike the watershed event of the capitulation of the administration of Columbia Univ. in 1968 which ushered in students taking over universities and turning American colleges into progressive propaganda factories.

If the chiefs et al think that embracing the protesters is going to bring about harmony, they will soon be disabused of such notions. While the media continues to proffer the fiction that the protests have been mostly peaceful, the reality is obviously different. For an entire week Americans have been watching blue cities across the country go up in flames, seen bottles and bricks thrown, police cars set ablaze and businesses big and small get looted and destroyed. Just last night, exactly one week since Mr. Floyd’s death, a police officer is shot in the head in Las Vegas, four officers were shot in St Louis, a car rammed into officers in Buffalo in the Bronx a cop was beaten while onlookers videotaped and egged the assailants on.

The people causing this mayhem have no interest in being heard or understood. Their goal is not a better neighborhood, city or America. They want to loot, they want to destroy, they want to cause chaos, and fundamentally, they want to start a revolution because they have no vested interest in things like private property, rule of law, capitalism and freedom.

Given the decades long endless undermining of such ideas from the media, from Democrats, and the education machinery at all levels, it’s no surprise that millions of young Americans, both black and white are happy to not only stand by and watch as their cities and the country burn, but more, they want to participate in it. This all reminds me of something I read 25 years ago in a biography by Peter G. MacDonald of North Vietnamese General Vo Nguyen Giap. In reference to the Vietnam War in general and the Tet Offensive in particular Giap said something to the effect that “We didn’t have to win the war on the ground, we only had to win over the American media and they would do the rest.” Probably not an exact quote - it's been a quarter century after all! - but the truth of his sentiments can be seen in the widespread notion at the time that the United States was defeated in the Tet Offensive. Completely wrong. After the initial surprise the North Vietnamese were not only repelled, but their army was so badly destroyed that Giap considered surrendering. But he didn’t because he didn’t have to... The American media did their job and the tide eventually turned against the war.

Today on a much different playing field the leftist media and their Democrat partners are playing the same role and but it’s not on some far off field where Americans are dying, it’s here in the United States and the enemy of freedom the media and Democrats are supporting is not some foreign army, but rather the looters and anarchists who seek to burn the place to the ground and start a real revolution. By lying about the peaceful nature of the protests, by lying about the prevalence of police brutality, by lying about America being a racist and fundamentally unjust society, they are tearing at the frayed threads that already keep young people connected to the nation and its values.  In doing so they are encouraging the destruction you see across the country today.

As Rudy Giuliani demonstrated when he saved literally thousands of black lives by simply enforcing the law, the only way to stop this chaos is to actually enforce the law and arrest or shoot if necessary the rioters who are destroying American cities and threatening the lives of police and civilians alike. Unless governors and mayors step up and decide to win this war for America's soul rather than hold hands with and tolerate the terrorists, 2020 looks like it might just be another long hot summer.