For most Californians, the Fourth of July was a delightful celebration, a chance to honor our nation on its 250th birthday, and an opportunity to embrace the country that we love.
For the crowds of thugs who invaded Newport Beach, it was an occasion for mayhem and destruction.
Some shot illegal fireworks into crowds. Others appeared to loot a grocery store.
The chaos was so bad that police on horseback had to charge crowds on the beach, scattering them, screaming, in every direction.
There were hundreds of arrests, and police officers were reportedly injured in the mélée.
It was a mob, a “street takeover” that invaded one of the most peaceful communities in Southern California, one of the jewels of Orange County.
Next door, in Huntington Beach, half a million people joined Independence Day celebrations that were cheerful, patriotic, and beautiful.
The famed “Surf City USA” held the largest Fourth of July party west of the Mississippi River, without incident.
There were massive flags, bikinis on the beach, and a spectacular fireworks display. A celebration worthy of the semiquincentennial.
But if the crowds in Huntington Beach reflected the best of California, the scoundrels that descended on Newport Beach represented the worst.
This sort of behavior has been “normalized” by weak leaders who have excused it in the past.
Six years ago, during the long, hot summer of 2020, when Black Lives Matter protests erupted across the nation, liberals encouraged us to overlook the violence that accompanied some of the demonstrations.
The protests were “mostly peaceful,” TV reporters said, as buildings burned behind them. And anyway, the mobs were motivated by a righteous cause — or so we were told.
Public health officials who had locked down the population for COVID now issued proclamations that “systemic racism” was a bigger threat to public health, and therefore people not only could gather, but should gather in large crowds to protest against it.
That gave license to mobs to cause billions of dollars of damage to our cities, some of which have not yet recovered.
Local leaders in California gave new life to those destructive impulses by encouraging unrest against federal immigration officials.
Not in Orange County, of course — but California Democrats have tried to punish local governments that buck the “sanctuary” trend.
It is long past time to restore law and order in California. We cannot enjoy our freedom if we are not safe.
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