Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy is a desperado with wonky ideas about the Constitution, and the armed nutjobs who joined his skirmish with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) are a nutty vanguard of the deluded conspiracy-mongers who dominate the far right wing in American politics. But they aren’t in the wrong.
Given their actions, they are being called patriots and terrorists alike. The domestic kind of course.
According to the Los Angeles Times, Nevada’s two U.S. senators disagreed on the nature of the armed men who scared off equally armed BLM federal agents as they attempted to confiscate the cattle that belong to Bundy.
Democratic Sen. Harry Reid, the majority leader, called them “domestic terrorists” in an interview with the Las Vegas Review.
In response to Reid’s comment, Republican Sen. Dean Heller said, “What Sen. Reid may call domestic terrorists, I call patriots.”
Reid is wrong. The men who bombed the Boston Marathon were terrorists. The anti-government militants who blew up the federal building in Oklahoma were terrorists. The neo-Confederates looking for a fight with the BLM are just excited rednecks with visions of justice and too much talk radio circling in their heads.
Granted, Heller is probably wrong too. Patriots is maybe not the best way to describe the guys who aimed AR-15s and AK-47s at federal agents. But cheers to them for standing up for what they believe to be their freedom as Americans.
But neither was the BLM smart in their decision to send in armed men to collect an overdue tax bill; they really just played into the paranoia with that move.
Perhaps the most entertaining aspect of this whole debate is the reasons behind the original demand.
In August, the Desert Tortoise Conservation Center announced it would begin euthanizing half of the 1,400 tortoises at its facility as a result of federal budget cuts. Though according to the BLM, healthy tortoises will be relocated and not euthanized.
Taking that information into account, it seems there is no reason for Bundy’s cattle to not be on the land, and now it’s just an argument about money, and liberties of Americans. If you ask the ranchers that is.
Gardner also said, “If we do not [look into this issue deeper] and we allow this federal government to increase its power and its jurisdiction further and further into the lives of everyday Americans, we’re very surely going to lose the freedom and liberty that America is supposed to be about.”
What he is saying is pretty on mark if you ask me. How far are we willing to allow the government to go in their attempts to control nearly everything?
Everything from the Endangered Species Act to the Homestead Act is being brought into question. Talk of changing some of these acts is swarming, with no end in sight. If that process begins, I fear we will see the first crumbs of a very big mess.
Bottom line is, guns are still legal, and last I checked self-defense is still a thing. While aiming guns at federal government officials may be a one-way ticket to jail in most cases, with the way that the BLM handled their end with armed people as well, I think it was a fair reaction on the citizens’ part.
The end story here isn’t a clean cut to either side. Both sides had some radical reactions, and both sides are wrong in one way or another.
This debate has been going on between Bundy and the BLM for over 20 years so far, and personally I don’t look for a conclusion to be met anytime soon.
Hopefully blood won’t be shed – federal, desperado or cattle, for that matter.
