There are many things to learn about what is taking place in Ferguson, Missouri, but one lesson is not being discussed very much. When it comes to riots fanned by the flaming rhetoric of race hustlers, guilt manipulators, and liberal apologists, when the excrement hits the fan, you and I are on our own.

If there is a national breakdown in the electrical grid, and we are unable to get timely food deliveries to local grocery stores, we are on our own. No one is going to come and rescue us. Adopt the Boy Scout motto and make it your own: Be prepared. Having a few months of food and water stored is the least you should do. It will never be wasted. Think of it as insurance that you can eat and drink.

If calls for national protests after a Grand Jury determined that officer Darren Wilson acted appropriately in the self-defense killing of Michael Brown, I can assure you, we will be on our own. Even calling out the National Guard won’t help. No mayor wants another Kent State incident where four students were killed and nine others injured by guardsmen. No city wants a song written about political missteps like what happened when Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young produced “Ohio.” No one wants to hear “Four dead in _________________.”

No matter what decision the Grand Jury came to, there would have been riots. Indicting Officer Wilson would have been seen as a guilty verdict. The response would have been a call for swift “justice,” like in the film The Ox-Bow Incident (1943). “Hang him” or “Burn, baby, burn.”

It isn’t helping the Attorney General Eric Holder has said, “While the grand jury proceeding in St. Louis County has concluded, the Justice Department’s investigation into the shooting of Michael Brown remains ongoing.” He’s reopened the wound and poured salt in it, giving justification to the rioters to act where the Grand Jury did not.

As we’ve seen, no indictment brought a similar response that called for retaliation that resulted in the burning and looting of stores owned and run by black business owners.

The violence was indiscriminate. The violence was not aimed at anyone in particular. This makes all of us a target.

The targets were chosen for a simple reason: the owners were defenseless. No one was going to stop them. No one was going to shoot the looters and fire bombers. Maybe the owners thought the police would help. They didn’t.

And there’s the lesson. Dr. Gary North puts all of this in historical perspective for us, reminding us of similar type riots in Los Angeles in 1992:

“Push came to shove in Ferguson. The law enforcement agencies figured ‘better safe than sorry’ for them. They tried to contain the violence, not stop it. Once again, they sent a message to citizens. It was the same message sent by the looters, ‘You’re on your own. Do not resist.’

“In the 1992 Watts II riots — the Rodney King riots — Korean store owners got guns. They stood their ground. They had no problem.

“As you watch this, listen to the concern of the off-camera media lady. She asks the on-site lady: ‘Does it look as though these guns are registered?’ Then she asked about handguns [being used by the looters]. Handguns!

“My response would have been this: ‘Does it look as though the looters are registered?’

“The liberal media have long since castrated the majority. But not in this part of town in 1992.”

The Koreans were prepared. They did not live under the false impression that the Lone Ranger was going to show up.