When anti-lockdown protesters marched on the capitol in Michigan, opposing governor Whitmer\’s heavy hand in controlling the day-to-day lives of her citizens, it was for good reason. Whitmer enjoyed far too much her arbitrary emergency powers. She wasn\’t just demanding that her citizens shelter in place; she tried to tell them which items they could and could not buy in stores, seemingly at random, mostly because she enjoyed telling people what to do.

Politicians speak of optics; Whitmers\’ are the worst. She looks like Lord Farquaad, the physically diminutive and morally small dictator of the Shrek franchise. Always sweating, her skin reflecting even the faintest illumination, Whitmer is as petty a progressive as ever there has been. She is a terrible leader, of course; would-be dictators always are. But she is also a liar, who deliberately slandered the legally armed protesters as \”Nazis\” and white supremacists. Her \”proof?\” Some of the protesters carried signs comparing Whitmer, rightly, to a Nazi. That\’s progressive logic in a nutshell.

In that way, Whitmer is a good Democrat. Democrats delight in controlling people from cradle to grave while misconstruing — deliberately or thanks to Dunning-Kruger — any opposition to their dictates. They live their lives in a perpetual state of agitation, never resting in their search to ban almost everything and regulate what remains. They lie awake at night, terrified that somebody, somewhere, is doing, saying, or even thinking something of which they do not approve. They then rise from their bedchambers with the sun, determined to write utopia into being, if only they can pass enough laws constraining enough freedom and confiscating enough wealth.

At the time of these protests — which occurred, you\’ll remember, before Whitmer herself participated in Black Lives Matter \”protests,\” marching along with the other incipient race-rioters in an ugly pantomime of the freedom she denies others — we were of course told that these armed men were going to kill Grandma with COVID-19. Whitmer was very, very angry that these reckless white supremacists would gather in groups in contravention of her pandemic quarantine. Somehow, these lock-down orders did not apply when it was Black Lives Matter marching, but that was not the ONLY hypocrisy on display.

No, the major hypocrisy was actually a matter of speculation. We were told that only \”white privilege\” allowed these angry, armed white men (who were so angry they stopped at checkpoints to be temperature-screened before entering Michigan\’s statehouse) to demonstrate unmolested. Why, if these were armed black men, they\’d be gunned down by racist cops, who\’d likely cackle in malicious glee at the thought of legally exercising their bloodthirsty desire to kill men of color. Any similar assembly of armed black men would be treated as domestic terrorism, we were cautioned, by progressives who clucked their displeasure at so many men with so many guns refusing to do as Lord Farquaad demanded.

Except, of course, that this was a lie. As it turns out, when armed black men march on a public location and even threaten bystanders… nothing happens.

On July 4th, a heavily armed group of black men, dressed identically in black paramilitary garb, marched on Stone Mountain, Georgia. Unlike the armed Michigan protesters, they were not peaceful and they were not restrained. They threatened motorists and demanded reparations. They gestured with their guns and made a number of aggressive accusations. They did their best to intimidate anyone who was unfortunate enough to cross their path. Mostly, though, they railed and screamed at imaginary \”white supremacists,\” challenging these phantom racists to come face them. None of the invisible racists obliged this armed mob — many of whose weapons were airsoft rifles and .22 plinkers — and one presumes they marched home very satisfied with themselves.

Meanwhile, social media trumpeted the fact that a group of racists in Gettysburg that same weekend had been \”owned.\” Social media, we were told, had spread the rumor that the domestic terrorists, Antifa, were going to show up in Pennsylvania to destroy Civil War monuments and burn American flags. Everyone on social media, we were then informed, had a good laugh when the evil white supremacists — really just patriotic Americans who, sick of the destruction of their nation at the hands of Antifa and BLM rioters, turned out in force — gathered in Gettysburg  by themselves. Boy, they sure got served, gathering together with their guns and their (alleged) white supremacy, only to have nobody to confront.

No one seems to have wondered if perhaps Antifa planned show up, but thought better of it when large numbers of armed American right-wingers showed up to stop them. Antifa is notorious for bullying and attacking the elderly and anyone they outnumber sufficiently. The few street fights they\’ve had with prepared opposition (such as \”Based Stick Man\”) were not a full-blown altercations with fully armed Second Amendment zealots; they were limited skirmishes. Sooner or later, this luck is going to run out. Sooner or later, armed groups on both sides of this culture war are going to end up in the same place at the same time.

If a hostile \”black militia\” given to making threats and intimidating helpless white families encounters a group of amped-up right-wingers spoiling for a fight, nothing good will happen. Honestly, it\’s a miracle this has not happened yet. Occasionally, the left\’s stormtroopers encounter armed resistance they do not expect (such as the BLM counter-protesters who attacked a small contingent of actual white supremacists in California… and got stabbed for their trouble). If something like that happens, not with small groups, but with hundreds of armed individuals on either side, a massacre will occur.

This must not be allowed to happen. This is why the abdication of law enforcement matters. For too long, the authorities have allowed violent street fighters of the Left to have free reign, intimidating and even assaulting American citizens. This state of affairs cannot persist, because if it does, it is only a matter of time before armed representatives from both sides stumble across each other at a protest site.

I am not eager to see the carnage that will result — and neither should you be. Such an event is only a few steps removed from an undeclared Civil War. 2020 has been bad enough. Let\’s not add to it the worst of America\’s bygone conflicts.