Shades of Reagan: Bill Barr Vows to Employ 1960s Anti-Riot Law on Loot-and-Riot Thugs

I’m already seeing it on Twitter: “Thank goodness we have Bill Barr.”

Which makes sense. Here’s his plan of action on the beasts overtaking our cities under color of civil rights protests, according to the New York Post:

Attorney General Bill Barr will go after violent demonstrators with a 1968 law meant to quell rioting.

“We must have law and order on our streets and in our communities,” Barr said Saturday at DOJ headquarters in Washington, DC.

“It is a federal crime to cross state lines or to use interstate facilities to incite or participate in violent rioting,” he said. “We will enforce these laws.”

Barr accused “anarchistic and far-left extremists, using Antifa-like tactics” for the unrest that has spread to cities throughout the nation since Monday, in the wake of the death of George Floyd while in the custody of Minneapolis police.

“Groups of outside radicals and agitators are exploiting the situation to pursue their own separate and violent agenda,” he said.

The federal Anti-Riot Act, part of the Civil Rights Act of 1968, carries penalties of up to five years in prison.

In light of what is going on in just Los Angeles, where these disturbing ABC7 videos are visible, they’re looting and burning small businesses to the ground — with no social distancing. The third video at this ABC7 report (non-shareable) taken from a news helicopter shows organized thugs driving up in a truck with no plates to a shambling little nail salon on Melrose Avenue, smashing and breaking into the small business, which, the reporters note was already weakened by the coronavirus shutdown, breaking in with looter force and destroying the shambling little small storefront. Not just one – they went storefront to storefront like army ants for the chopper camera – a nail salon, a Hello Kitty toy store – aiming for just the safe to bring out, pounding the safe with hammers in the street before uploading it to the truck which sped away. The report is shockingly accurate in the reporters’ commentary and observations – noting the beat-up state of the businesses, hoping openly that the safe being stolen will be empty, and manipulating the chopper to read the license plate of the looting truck operation, finding none and adding observations that the truck had planned to steal the safe all along based on its missing license plates.

Whoa. Have never seen reporting like this before – raw and accurate as events unfolded. And I have a dog in this fight – for years I lived in Los Angeles and I know this place well. I’m horrified at the barbarism going on now, brought on by organized thugs, whether directed from some glassy tower foundation out of state or Antifa squat. Bust them.

Which rather tells you that Barr is right to go after these thugs with zero mercy. This isn’t about civil rights protests. This is about organized crime and organized violence, in pursuit of some political aim. And whoever is doing it needs to be in jail, particularly the organizers from the top.

The one thing notable here is that Barr’s act has shades of the great Ronald Reagan. Reagan, recall, was the governor of California, who came down with a hard hand against domestic terrorists from the 1960s, back when Bill Ayers was in his heyday, laughing at all the liberals who spared him prison for his sickening Weather Underground’s vile murder and mayhem streak. While institutions led by liberals, such as the University of California kowtowed to, and were laid low by hippies, rioters, looters and thugs bellowing revolution, Reagan put a stop to them, calling out the national guard, making himself ragingly hated by leftists everywhere … and beloved by the American people. Reagan rose to national prominence for his firm stance against the chaotic left and the rest is history.

Barr’s taking a page from that history, defending the American people from this leftist plague hitting America’s small businesses and more, and betting that even with two generations of leftwingery taught in schools, the American people are going to be grateful for the intervention. It worked for Reagan, it will work for Barr and the entire Trump administration. And based on that ABC7 report, is likely to be welcomed. Everyone knows that morally, hitting back hard, and with resolution, at this violent, larcenous, destructive chaos, in the face of a long soggy history of liberal coddling, is absolutely the most courageous thing any leader can do. Leaders like this get remembered.