Remember back during the early days of the Obama administration, when New York Times pontificator Tom Friedman dedicated an entire column to his mournful observation that we weren’t more like Communist China? That we couldn’t seem to get things done because the leaders of our “one-party democracy” weren’t as “enlightened” as the leaders of China’s “one-party autocracy”?

It was a telling and disgraceful bit of fetishism on Friedman’s part, but I’ll say this: Those leftist dirtbags in Minneapolis ought to thank their lucky stars that we aren’t China. Because if there’s one thing that totalitarian regimes know how to do, it’s put down an insurrection.

And what’s going on in that leftist hellhole of Minneapolis is an insurrection, by any reasonable assessment. When a sitting mayor orders duly sworn federal agents to “get the f*** out” of an American city, that’s insurrectionist. When a sitting governor tells his citizens to both stalk and resist federal agents and threatens them with future prosecution for the crime of doing their jobs, that’s insurrectionist.

When that same governor, Tim Walz, inflames the passions of a dimwitted and impressionable sliver of the citizenry by claiming that ICE agents are a “modern-day Gestapo” and are committing “atrocities” and “just plain grabbing Minnesotans and shoving them into unmarked vans, kidnapping innocent people with no warning and no due process,” that’s insurrectionist.

And when he says, “Let’s be very, very clear: This long ago stopped being a matter of immigration enforcement. Instead, it is a campaign of organized brutality against the people of Minnesota by our own federal government,” that’s insurrectionist.

Think about it: If the Democrats believe a relative handful of miscreants and a whole bunch of Capitol tourists engaged in an insurrection on January 6, 2021, then what are we to make of the well-organized and dangerous mobsters we’re seeing in Minneapolis?

Perhaps sensing that he’d gone too far, Walz earlier this week tried to cool things down a bit … by blaming Donald Trump. “I am making a direct appeal to the president,” Walz said. “Let’s turn the temperature down. Stop this campaign of retribution. This is not who we are.”

That’s too little, too late. A few accommodating words, after months of hostile and incendiary rhetoric, don’t make things right.

To be clear, ICE wouldn’t even have to conduct these raids if Minnesota’s law enforcement agencies had simply cooperated with federal agents to enforce our immigration laws and protect the citizenry by getting some of these very bad people off the street.

But no. The Democrats have a midterm election to win, and their goal is to make Trump look like Hitler, regardless of the deep dishonesty that characterization entails. Trump, though, can’t let this continue. Otherwise, Minneapolis becomes a blueprint for well-funded leftists nationwide.

The question, though, is: What does Trump do?

Yesterday, Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807, thereby at least suggesting the possibility of sending U.S. troops into Minneapolis. Said Trump via Truth:

If the corrupt politicians of Minnesota don’t obey the law and stop the professional agitators and insurrectionists from attacking the Patriots of I.C.E., who are only trying to do their job, I will institute the INSURRECTION ACT, which many Presidents have done before me, and quickly put an end to the travesty that is taking place in that once great State.

Does Trump have the authority to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807? Constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley certainly thinks so.

“The Insurrection Act,” says Turley, “is very generally worded. It allows a president to call out military force in order to enforce the laws of the United States. That was done by Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy in very similar circumstances. In those circumstances, you had local officials, including governors, who were extremely aggressive, anti-federal government, saying they would not assist in the enforcement of civil rights laws. These are obviously different laws. These are the immigration laws. But both are laws of the United States. And you have a governor here, and a mayor, who have been fueling the rage.”

What the professor is trying to say is that this has gone on long enough and threatens our Republic.