It is President Donald Trump’s finest hour, the equivalent of Winston Churchill in the Battle of Britain.

Dispatching Marines and the National Guard to Los Angeles and throughout the country is necessary to protect immigration enforcement officials and federal buildings from uncontrolled violence and arson. What starts with throwing rocks ends with drones supplied by communist China. This is invasion or rebellion by any yardstick, which the United States Supreme Court will certainly affirm. The curfew imposed by Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass corroborates Trump’s position.

The prime culprits in the epidemic of mayhem are immigrants who should not even be in the country, many of whom have criminal and violent records. They aspire to the destruction of the United States.

The chief constitutional mission of the president is to make the people and the country safe. If that means some encroachment on freedom of speech in order to prevent violence and the impeding of law enforcement, so be it. If these foreign terrorists have their way, there will be no free speech for anyone.

California Governor Gavin Newsom cynically courts immigrants for ulterior, partisan political motives. President Donald Trump was right to threaten criminal prosecution of the governor for obstructing deportations as though he were above the law.

President Trump understands what the pampered elites do not. Rebellion, invasion and anarchy are afoot in the United States as never before. Venezuela has attacked the United States using the international terrorist gang Tren de Aragua as the invading force. They are indistinguishable from the Vandals who sacked Rome in 455 A.D. As philosopher George Santayana warned, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Democrats are blind to Venezuela’s existential threat to the United States. It is an appendage of the Chinese Communist Party as much as TikTok.

President Trump’s genius is in understanding Machiavelli’s advice: better to be feared than loved if a choice must be made. Weakness only emboldens Satan, as we discovered on 9/11.

The United States is the greatest country in world history by orders of magnitude. We selflessly rescued Europe and Asia from speaking German or Japanese in World War II. We acted out of altruism. There was nothing in it for the United States. Ditto for the 1948 Marshall Plan. What other nation has ever acted with such saintliness? If America were a person, it would long ago have been canonized by the pope.

President Trump rightly deplored the lack of celebration in the United States of our victory in World War II, in contrast to our allies in Europe. The continent would be subsisting under a Nazi yolk if not for the participation of the United States and the likes of General George S. Patton. We should honor D-Day, June 6, 1944, as a national holiday for soldiers who gave or risked that last full measure of devotion to safeguard against an invasion by Hitler or Hirohito.

The Republican presidential nominee in 1964, Barry Goldwater, sermonized, “Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice.” The nation voted for Lyndon Johnson and got strife and chaos.

Armstrong Williams (www.armstrongwilliams.com; @arightside) is a political analyst, syndicated columnist and owner of the broadcasting company, Howard Stirk Holdings. He is also part owner of The Baltimore Sun.