A basic question all Americans should ask themselves before they draw any other conclusions about events in Minneapolis is this: when is it right to interfere with law enforcement?

The consequences of doing so are, obviously, potentially grave, even fatal. Obstructing or harassing officers of the law could put their lives in danger as well as yours, and bystanders’ as well. Law enforcement, of necessity, involves risks and the potential for violence, which officers are authorised to use and criminals – or third parties – are not.

One side in the Minneapolis turmoil does not accept these premises, or at least doesn’t accept they apply when the laws to be upheld are laws that leftists don’t like.

This side, when it’s honest, simply says that immigration laws are generally unjust, claiming they’re racist or contrary to the higher law of free-market principles. (The latter is the Wall Street Journal line.)

But that reasoning, such as it is, doesn’t go far enough: even if one thinks the laws are wrong, there are other moral considerations that apply, such as whether there aren’t other ways to fix the law that don’t involve endangering police or anyone else. Why not vote? Why not make a reasoned case to your fellow citizens that they should elect lawmakers to change the policy?

There’s no need to look to the most radical activists – people who are more or less open revolutionaries – to find an answer to those questions. Everyday commentary in the legacy media – or on social media from ordinary Democrats, NeverTrumpers, libertarians, and others who don’t think of themselves as hard leftists – will explain well enough.

These people all believe that America, and especially the Trump administration, is fascist, and so of course elections and persuasion are not enough.

What the ‘moderate’ incendiaries don’t dare say, but their more truthful radical brethren do, is that if America is fascist, then police are the enemy. It’s always ok to cause trouble for law enforcement: there is, in fact, a moral right to resist arrest as well as to assist anyone else who is doing so.

You can always yell at a cop, punch back at a cop if her or she tries making an arrest, and be ready to run over or shoot a cop in the midst of a confrontation.........

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