There has been much said, written, and opined, about the goings on in Nevada over the past week. Legal experts, who strangely enough skipped law school, have pontificated on the right and wrong of a situation that really is hard to fathom in today’s every-thing-is-fine-America. Does the Bundy Family have the right to keep using Federal Land, essentially claiming squatter’s rights, for their cattle to graze upon? Does the Federal Government have the right to confiscate the cattle, who have so graciously and efficiently eliminated the need for a professional lawn and garden service to maintain the land? Here’s my take, those are the small issues in a much broader discussion, and one that quite frankly should scare the snot out of you, if you place any value at all in the concept of America as it was founded.
We’ll start here. The more astute among you may have noticed that the Federal Government owns very little, and by that I mean lest than one tenth of one percent, of the land East of the Mississippi River. West of our national geographic dividing line of course is a different story. More interesting than that wonderful little nugget of information however is the reason why. During the early days of our nation, it never dawned on our leaders that the government would ever hold any lands of consequence. Yes they knew that a standing army would have to be kept some where, and by the time Jefferson was President, they knew that they would need a couple of offices in which to conduct the business at hand for the nation. By and large however, our earliest leaders envisioned a nation where the private sector would be best suited to utilize everything available in the most efficient manner, in order to have every man prosper to the fullest potential possible. The term, 40 acres and a mule, was born in this era, and the concept was that each citizen if he wanted, would be granted land in sufficient quantity, to make of it what he could. The economic theory was that private citizens, given the opportunity to create their own wealth, would bring about the greatest amount of prosperity for the greatest amount of ordinary citizens. It was truly the grandest experiment of Adam Smith’s, “Wealth of Nations,” that the world had ever seen. It was his invisible hand given free reign to weave its magic, and that invisible hand is the working definition of American Exceptionalism. It worked, and worked remarkably well.
West of the Mississippi however is a different story. In Nevada for example, our Federal Government owns 78% of the land. This has effectively changed the dynamic between government and private citizen in what can only be regarded as the most fundamental of ways. This has given the Federal Government control over which businesses and what resources will be allowed to flourish in the Western half of our nation. When Barack Obama truthfully declares that fossil fuel production has increased during his Administration, he always fails to mention that this is in spite of his efforts as President, and not because of them. Fossil fuel production has been largely diminished on Federally owned lands, and the entirety of the increase has been due to private land owners participating in a boom previously unforeseen by the politicos now in charge of the top down management of our national economy. This group has the political bent to replace fossil fuel production with solar and wind, and since they control land owned by the government, they have the power to force their will upon us. (By the way, there’s a connection here to the situation in Nevada that we’ll discuss later.) Every acre of land owned by our Federal Government is an acre not being put to productive use by the Private Sector, and one that is used to allow for cronies to be granted privilege not honestly earned. So, when the Bundy’s are called out for squatting on Federal Land, ask yourself why that land is owned by the Federal Government in the first place, and why the tradition of the government getting out of the way of the Private Sector has been eschewed.
The next thing that I’ve noticed over the last few years, since Barack Obama has become President, is that Federal Agencies not at all associated with law enforcement are toting guns. Those of you who know me, know that I am a big Second Amendment advocate, but this is not what our Founding Fathers meant to accomplish with the Second Amendment. Preventing those agencies from running roughshod over the citizens of this nation however, that is in fact the reason why the delegates to that Constitutional Convention demanded that the Second Amendment be included in the Bill of Rights prior to forming the Union that is the United States of America. I do not know how well armed those supporting the Bundy’s were in the open Nevada air, but if they were equipped with land mines and bazookas, that would have suited me just fine. The Bureau of Land Management has armed officers? This should worry any who value the freedoms that all citizens of this nation are born with, as a consequence of being gifted those freedoms by our Creator at the time of our birth. When campaigning, our President said that he envisioned a civilian force equal in training and armament to the military, and he wasn’t quite talking about protecting our Second Amendment, as his actions and rhetoric have shown repeatedly. He was speaking about an armed Bureau of Land Management, an armed Department of Education, an armed Environmental Protection Agency, and so on. These entities are becoming militarized, and will inflict their leftist vision for our nation by force if necessary.
Another of the more frightening things to consider with this mobilization, along with Waco, Ruby Ridge, and the dozen or so other places where our government has taken it upon itself to brandish arms against private citizens, is the fact that our government has decided to brandish arms against private citizens. Somehow, the Mexican Drug Lords who have invaded our Southern Border, without any sort of resistance what so ever, are not considered a threat to the peace and security of our nation. Barack Obama has unilaterally eased the restrictions on Visas offered to Islamists with previously known involvement in terrorist activities, (albeit those with involvement in acts of terror deemed to, “not be that bad,” what ever in the Hell that means,) and still had dreams of bringing their ideology to the United States. Somehow, to our government, these people are not considered to be a threat to national security. From day one of this President’s Administration, the only people considered to be a threat to the national security of the United States of America are those of us who advocate for limited government, free market economics, or private property rights. To that end, the IRS has specifically targeted us, on the political right for increased scrutiny, and as we’ve just learned within the last day and a half, for criminal prosecution, based on our political activities. (Wave bye bye to the First Amendment my fellow inhabitants of the land formerly known as the home of the free. I will await your arrival in one of the splendid reeducation camps, soon to be sprouting up all over the fruited plains.) As far as I know, every single government agency now has armed employees. What’s even more frightening than all of that however, is the fact that our government was able to find enough people of sound mind and body to go along with all of this, and brandish those arms against their fellow citizens.
Another major problem to consider with all of this is in how these federal agencies are constituted to begin with. I know that I’ve written about this before, but it bears much further discussion. Currently, and I have no idea when exactly this began, the laws that create these agencies are written in a purposefully vague manner. The agencies are created to oversee some part of the federal behemoth and given the powers of all three branches of our checks and balances system. They write their own rules, administrate those rules, determine how they will be enforced, and adjudicate their own case load, all with a minimal amount of oversight or judicial review. The case of the EPA forcing farmers to treat spilled milk in the exact manner as an oil spill would still be clogged in our court system had the light of day not been brought to bear to expose the lunacy. The EPA backed off, but only because political pressures lined themselves up to determine that this was not the right time to enforce what they actually do have the legal right to do. Lost in all of the angst over whether the law is being followed is whether or not a law is even valid, or more importantly a good and moral law to begin with. Bad policies lead people making the correct moral decision to act outside of the law. That situation is far worse than most people realize, and we have put ourselves in this great nation in the reprehensible position of prosecuting people for attempting to benefit their fellow man and support their families.
I could have written this essay on any one of a hundred topics, and been able to include all of the same points. This one is somewhat special however. The government’s stated reasoning behind preventing cattle from cutting federal grass for free was that somehow, and this is a stretch by the way, it would be bad for the indigenous population of turtles. As it turns out however, Nevada’s Senior Senator, Harry Reid, has a relative named Rory, who has a friend that wishes to lease that particular strip of land in order to build, (wait for it….,) a solar farm. If you thought cows eating grass was bad for wild life, what do you think a solar farm, which has average daytime recorded temperatures over 800 degrees, would do? As it turns out, these places are literally the killing fields for all things ecological. So stick that in your Green Peace Pipe and smoke it. What we have hear is a case of crony Socialism, at its finest.
I have just one more thought that I’d like to leave you with. This is a level of tyranny that is on a par with why our nation revolted against England in general, and against Mad King George III specifically. Asked at another one of his meet real Americans campaign style photo ops today, President Zero was asked about his spiffy Health Insurance non-affordable destruction of the entire medical profession act. Specifically, the complaint lodged was in regards to the spiraling price tag on premiums for policies, which offer less coverage, and include deductibles so high that they’ll never be met. His answer was, the law has passed, I won’t sign a bill to repeal it, so get over it and move on. That’s the exact amount of respect George III showed for the people living here in the Colonies. We are no longer citizens my friends, we’re subjects now. It hasn’t been said officially, but semantics aren’t all that important anyhow.
Cross Posted from Musings of a Mad Conservative.
