I took this photo on June 19, 2016, in Rome:

Italian soldiers on guard near the Arch of Constantine, Roma, June 19, 2016. Photo by Dana R Pico; may be freely used, with attribution.

Then there was this photo, on Twitter, from Michael Tracey:

National Guardsmen, Washington, DC, January 18, 2020.

Mr Tracey said, “Asked the Guardsmen why they are standing around with unloaded rifles. “I don’t know, I’m just doing what I’m told””

Then we had Representative Steve Cohen (D-TN), saying that we just can’t trust anyone who might have voted for Donald Trump:

Rep. Steve Cohen implies that 75% of the National Guard are in the class of people who “may want to do something” at the inauguration.

Cohen is saying that National Guard troops who voted for Trump should automatically be suspected of being threats. pic.twitter.com/6ozID4y9ry

— America Rising (@AmericaRising) January 18, 2021

Had a Republican said something like that about soldiers who voted for a Democrat, the left would be up in arms. But when a Democrat says it? Crickets.

This is the reaction of the left after a couple hundred idiots, out of thousands upon thousands of demonstrators broke into the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

It was only a few months ago that President Trump said he might send federal law enforcement agents to Philadelphia to protect federal property from the #BlackLivesMatter demonstrators, whose Mostly Peaceful Protests™ resulted in curfews in 40 cities, hundreds of buildings looted, vandalized and burned. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported, on July 21, 2020:

Mayor Jim Kenney on Tuesday dismissed Trump’s stated concerns about public safety as disingenuous given the administration’s inaction in the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic, which hit urban centers hardest.

“If the Trump administration wanted to help cities, they would have gotten off their rear ends back in March and April,” Kenney said. “This is a game he’s playing to divert attention away from the many crises that are facing this nation, and we’ll oppose it with everything we have.”

Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner compared Trump’s threat to fascism.

“My dad volunteered and served in World War II to fight fascism, like most of my uncles, so we would not have an American president brutalizing and kidnapping Americans for exercising their constitutional rights and trying to make America a better place, which is what patriots do,” he said in a statement. “Anyone, including federal law enforcement, who unlawfully assaults and kidnaps people will face criminal charges from my office.”

U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey (R., Pa.) dodged the question of whether Trump should send federal officers to Philadelphia and instead joined in attacking the city’s Democratic leaders.

“The rioting, violence, and lawlessness in Portland is a disgrace, and I hope it does not happen in Philadelphia,” Toomey said. “One way to ensure that it does not is for Philadelphia’s mayor and district attorney to actually support the police, enforce the law, and hold criminals accountable.”

U.S. Sen. Bob Casey (D., Pa.) said Trump’s “secret police are kidnapping and holding citizens without charges for exercising their constitutionally-guaranteed rights.”

“This is totalitarianism,” Casey said. ”Law enforcement should protect the people — not the president’s self-interested political motives. … This unconstitutional paramilitary force has no place anywhere in a healthy democracy and, considering Philadelphia’s historical significance as the birthplace of our Constitution, it would be especially disrespectful and insulting here.”

Yet Democratic Governors all across the country have closed their Capitol buildings, and put up barriers and National Guardsmen, and for what? The pro-Trump rioters who broke into the Capitol assaulted some Capitol police officers, one of whom was killed when struck by a fire extinguisher, but unless I have missed something, the only actual shots fired were by the Capitol police! The rioters broke some windows, trashed a couple of offices, and apparently stole a laptop from Nancy Pelosi’s office. Somehow, this all seems an overreaction.

The Inquirer wound up reporting that In Harrisburg and Trenton, ‘a collective sigh of relief’ as few pro-Trump loyalists show up following FBI warning:

Despite a stark warning from the FBI that state capitals could be targeted by far-right extremists or armed protesters this week, just a handful of demonstrators appeared at government buildings in Harrisburg and Trenton on Sunday as throngs of law enforcement patrolled.

“We are breathing a collective sigh of relief,” Trenton Mayor Reed Gusciora said Sunday afternoon. “It appears there are more skateboarders than protesters here.”

The relief rippled across a nation on the edge, still reeling from the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol that left five dead and set off a massive law enforcement response from coast to coast ahead of President-elect Joe Biden’s Wednesday inauguration. Last week, the FBI warned that at least one group that backs President Donald Trump called for supporters to “storm” government buildings, and authorities said some far-right personalities indicated they’d begin their demonstrations Sunday.

In preparation, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf activated hundreds of members of the National Guard, the Capitol was closed, and police fortified the building with barricades. Streets were shut down in Harrisburg and Trenton, and residents hunkered down in their homes.

It turned out that both cities were quiet Sunday. In Harrisburg, a few demonstrators appeared, as did a couple counterprotesters, including one who approached police and denounced white supremacy while clutching his lunch in a Styrofoam container. The largest gathering near the Capitol was likely a scrapbooking convention at a nearby hotel, made up of mostly women armed with scissors and creativity.

The calm was largely the case at state capitals across the country over the weekend and in D.C., where much of the city is being patrolled by about 25,000 National Guard troops, including some from Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Tall fencing surrounds the Capitol, and the National Mall is closed to the public in an unprecedented lockdown of the nation’s capital.

Of course, the left will claim that it was this determined show of force which kept the demonstrations from happening in the first place. We have to wait until January 20^th, to know for certain what demonstrations will occur, but the Democrats sure didn’t react like this during the Summer of Fire and Hate.

The Democrats have been trashing our First Amendment rights ever since COVID-19 broke out, trying to deny the right of the people peaceably to assemble. They gave last summer’s demonstrators plenty of leeway to loot and burn in our major cities, but now, when the protesters are conservatives, they have automatically assumed that any demonstrations will not be peaceful, and they’ve deployed thousands of troops to stop them.