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Some Lessons from Cliven Bundy

by: tim dunkin | published: 04 28, 2014

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By now, liberty lovers all across this country know the name of Cliven Bundy – the man who stood up to the federal government and won. Facing the destruction of his entire livelihood by corrupt government officials acting on the behalf of Chinese land grabbers, Bundy and his supporters – thousands of people who rallied to his defense – successfully withstood the jackboots of the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and drove off armed federal agents, including snipers, who had been sent to steal Bundy’s cattle and destroy his way of life as they had already done to many other ranchers in Nevada and other parts of the West.

My intention is not to discuss the actual legal claims made by Mr. Bundy about who “really” owns the land that is in dispute. I am not a lawyer, and am not going to pretend to be one. Neither do I give any credence to the claims about Bundy’s “racist” comments that were engineered by the New York Times’ Adam Nagourney, a left-wing gay man following the “progressive” playbook of demonizing those against whom you can’t argue. I would only note that Bundy didn’t actually make any “racist” comments. Instead, what he DID do was point out how terribly, terribly destructive that Democrats and the rest of the “progressive” movement have been for black Americans over the past few decades. If there’s anything racist going on, it involves trapping African-Americans in a grinding cycle of poverty and despair, while psychologically bullying them into continuing to support the very people – the Democrats – who trapped them in the first place.

Instead, what I’d like to discuss are some conclusions that we can draw from the recent standoff at Bunkerville.

First, the corruption of our government has reached a tipping point where politicians and agencies no longer even try to hide what they’re doing. Removing Cliven Bundy’s cattle and killing them was not about “the public good.” It wasn’t even really about “protecting the turtles.” Instead, it was about clearing off land so that Chinese land developers in league with Harry Reid’s son Rory could use the land as a remediation site connected with a solar power panel farm they wanted to build further north as part of a $5 billion development deal. In other words, it was about using public land so that the Reid family and foreign developers could make a pile of money – which makes the Senator’s complaints about Bundy “profiting off of public lands” just a bit hypocritical.

Now, it used to be that when politicians were caught with their hands in the till like this, they at least had the good grace to backpeddle, apologize, and try to do some damage control. Not Harry Reid, however. He decided to double down on stupid, accusing patriotic Americans defending our constitutional rights of being “domestic terrorists.” He even went further, ominously warning that “something will happen” to Cliven Bundy and his family, presumably for getting in the way of the Reid family’s multi-billion dollar payday. One wonders if this threat has anything to do with the Obama administration’s self-proclaimed privilege of “extra-judicial killings” without due process, and often without the public’s knowledge? I would daresay that if you’re a government that kills American citizens without due process, or which even levels threats against private citizens who have displeased you, then YOU are the domestic terrorists.

Second, the federal government, while corrupt and overbearing, does not seem ready (at least not quite yet) to actually cross the line of committing open violence against American citizens exercising their constitutional rights. At least not against large numbers of them at one time. This ought to suggest that the proper way to deal with future government harassment of one or a few citizens, at whatever level of government, is for citizens to band together to come to each others’ aid. After all, WE are the source of power and legitimacy in our constitutional system. The police, the federal agents – they work for us. They are sworn to uphold the Constitution and the laws which are in line with that Constitution. When they step outside or against that document, they no longer enjoy any authority that we the people are bound to recognize. If it takes thousands of armed Americans standing up to government excesses to cause the government to start getting back into line constitutionally, then so be it. In other words, the primary purpose for the 2^nd amendment – to serve as a deterrent against overbold tyranny – still works.

Third, the reports of the demise of the American patriot are overstated, to say the least. Far from tamely sitting back and letting the government run over yet another American citizen, thousands of our people finally stood up to the excesses of the government in the Cliven Bundy case. Regardless of what you think of Bundy’s arguments or whether he owes grazing fees or not, the fact remains that the federal government was way out of line in its response. It destroyed his cattle – which regardless of whether they were grazing on these lands legally, they are still Bundy’s property and subject to Fourth Amendment protections. It attempted to curtail constitutional free speech rights by setting up useless and onerous “first Amendment zones” to silence and nullify protestors. Its agents tasered his son and beat his pregnant daughter. In such a case, standing up against such provocations and putting the government back into its place was the only reasonable response for those who actually care about freedom.

Fourth, however, we did also learn that liberty is not out of the woods. The fact that all the abuses mentioned in the previous point were backed up by federal snipers and helicopters ready to use deadly force even before armed Americans came to the Bundies’ rescue points to a serious problem with our government and its agents. Our government apparently employs many agents who are more than happy to point high-powered rifles at the heads of pregnant women and other American citizens if some toady in Washington tells them to. It is high time for the federal government to be cleared out of its more psychopathic elements. There are apparently many people with a badge in our government who need to be kept far, far away from any job involving the opportunity to use deadly force against other people.

Fifth, a good question we can ask that is tangentially related to all of this is: why can the federal government expend so much money, time, and resources on one rancher in Nevada grazing a few hundred head of cattle, but seems incapable of projecting any sort of useful manpower on our southern border? The federal government goes to great lengths to (supposedly) protect a few turtles, but yet it doesn’t even try to stop thousands of often hostile foreigners from crossing our border every day? Foreigners who, besides being here illegally, also dump hundreds of tons of trash and garbage all across our desert lands each year. If protecting the turtles and the environment is such a big deal for the BLM and other federal agencies, what about the environmental damage done by all of this pollution?

Sixth, while the legal arguments used by Mr. Bundy regarding the ownership of federal lands (federal versus states) may not have gotten him very far, it ought to raise a more foundational question – just why does the federal government continue to hold so much land, especially in the western states? Seriously, if you look at a map of the American West, more than 50% of the surface area in many of these states is claimed by the federal government. In some states, that number reaches 80%. Why? Article I, Section 8, Paragraph 17 of the U.S. Constitution says,

“To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings.”

If you go by the plain wording of the Constitution, federal ownership of something like 95% of the lands it currently holds is illegal. There is nothing in the Constitution that says – as the government has argued in the Cliven Bundy court cases – that the federal government gets to keep certain state lands because they were originally ceded to the United States following the Mexican War of 1848. If the federal government wants land in a state that has been accepted into the Union, then it needs to purchase that land upon the consent of that state’s legislature. The federal government – despite its pretentions – does not just get to march in and seize land from states and from property owners in those states, as it is also trying to do now in the Red River valley in Texas. Further, there is no constitutional authority for the federal government to own lands for the purpose of building solar farms for the Chinese, protecting desert turtles, or anything else that doesn’t involve a fort, magazine, arsenal, dock-yard, or other needful military or infrastructural building (presumably we can assume that air force bases are contextually included in this).

I’m sure there are many more lessons that could be listed here but which I am omitting for the sake of space. But let the take home message from all of this be that we the people are responsible for whether we continue to enjoy our freedom or whether we lose it to Leviathan. We can either be like Cliven Bundy and his supporters, and like the gun owners in Connecticut who are refusing to register their guns under that state’s unconstitutional new firearms law, or we can continue to yield our liberties one piece at a time. It’s time for us to ask the hard questions, to stand firm, and to be ready to protect our freedoms with force if necessary. Nothing else will be true to the spirit of manly fortitude that animated our forefathers in their own fight for liberty.