As we watch ICE – digging out illegal aliens consistent with statute and Supreme Court precedent – we see them systematically provoked, targeted, attacked, and reacting. This is wrong. Those who conspire to undermine ICE are criminals. Stand up for law enforcement.
Countless federal and state laws exist to protect the nation’s citizens directly and indirectly by protecting law enforcement, who protect the citizens. Those who interfere with police operations, conspiring to undermine the rule of law, are themselves criminals.
Somehow this gets forgotten, in the ebb and flow – or gush and slosh – of modern Democrat politics, where activism passes for civics. Legal reality is worth revisiting.
When a state-funded group, like the Maine Immigrant Rights organizations and parallel groups in Minnesota incite violence, they become liable for any downstream events, the violence, destruction, injury, and – sadly – death that follows incitement.
The political left will say violence is justified, since law enforcement uses force. They are legally, morally, emotionally, spiritually, and factually wrong. While First Amendment rights are sacrosanct, and we all have a right to petition the government for redress of grievances, that has never given license to violence.
A 1969 case, Brandenburg v. Ohio, is the bright line. The US Supreme Court held that while we all have free speech and grievance rights, speech “directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and …likely to incite or produce such action” is impermissible.
In other words, when Minnesota and Maine activists, amped up rabble rousers, incite violent acts – and in Minnesota already have – to advance their narrative for illegal aliens, they are wrong. Provocation to violence, or “training” to provoke violence, is not legal.
While Brandenburg requires “imminent lawless action,” training for incitement prepares the way. In Maine, the Immigrant Rights Group pushes a narrative linking law enforcement to Nazi Germany, citing Anne Frank, saying “ICE has proven they will kill,” so “plan accordingly,” know “violence is a last resort.” What is that but incitement?
Legally, look at 18 USC 372, “Conspiracy to Impede or Injury Officer,” which says: “If two or more persons … conspire to prevent, by force, intimidation, or threat, any person from …discharging any duties … or induce (them) to leave the place where his duties as an officer are required … or to injure him … while engaged in the lawful discharge (of duties) or to interrupt, hinder, or impede him in the discharge of his official duties, each … shall be fined” or face six years in prison. Dozens of similar laws exist.
Bottom line: Average citizens should spin down, not allow agitators, activists, and out-of-state kooks, communists, and the fanners of chaos to influence them. Americans should not allow themselves to become “useful idiots” for those who recklessly promote violence.
In Minnesota and Maine, governors with no sense of history, civic duty, lawfulness, or how their words create fear and activate violence, should quiet themselves, scroll back. But across the country, whether these governors and Democrat leaders wake up, we must.
Promoting lawlessness in the name of anything, much less attacks on police, is an attack on civil society and anti-American. Blue state governors know this, nevertheless they aim to use fear as a tool for advancing power. Do not buy it. Lies are lies. Laws are laws.
Bottom line: We are a nation of laws, and our law enforcement community – local, state, and federal – is the best of us, sworn to defend the Bill of Rights, order, and our lives. They put on a vest, badge, and gun daily to help protect us. It is time we stand up for them.
Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, Maine attorney, ten-year naval intelligence officer (USNR), and 25-year businessman. He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (North Country Press, 2018), and “Cherish America: Stories of Courage, Character, and Kindness” (Tower Publishing, 2024). He is the National Spokesman for AMAC. Today, he is running to be Maine’s next Governor (please visit BobbyforMaine.com to learn more)!
