Federal Lands

The takeover by protesters of the Malheur Natural Wildlife Refuge is not about federal authority, private lands or a redress of grievances. Rather it is a disagreeable fight between an anti-government family against the rest of us.

I think I stated it succinctly and fairly.

The Bundy family has been an anti-authority clan for some time. They are a conspiracy favoring family as well. They don’t see a friendly face among any government authority be it local or federal. For them all government begins with them as private citizens. If they didn’t give their express authority for a program or policy decision, then it doesn’t exist in their mind.

If you think this is the absence of all authority – or anarchy – then I think you would be approaching the kind of thinking the Bundys embrace.

Government in America is pretty simple. As Abraham Lincoln said it, American government is of, for, and by the people. That’s it. Government, any government, gets its authority from the people in elections, constitutions of the nation and each of the individual states. An entire mechanism is created to hold true to these documents and authority. It is why public policy is so complicated at times. The health and well being of the public at large is not to be harmed. It is to be protected. Once protected the government is expressly granted the authority to perform the functions that the body politic cannot perform alone.

The Bundys are ranchers – people of the land. Generations ago they and fellow ranchers needed more grazing land. So they paid a small fee for grazing rights from land owned and protected from despoliation by the federal government. That land is owned by all the people of the nation. That is the ‘public face’ of the land’s ownership. You and I own that land.

Over time some ranchers could not afford to remain in business. To protect them and their interests the government bought them out. Money was paid for ownership of the property. The government is not in the ranching business, so they turned the land into preserves for ecological protection, wildlife refuges, research and repositories of history and culture – and the research of same. That is what the Malheur Refuge facility is and has been for some time.

The Bundys, however, feel somehow that the federal land belongs rightfully to ranchers and their forebears. Although they have grazing rights to some of that land and similar tracts, they have to pay for them. The act of payment to them is a ‘tax’ unfairly levied. But then I think the Bundys would feel all action of any government is unfairly levied. Theirs is an unreasonable extension of anti-government ideology.

The rest of us, however, respect the role of government as a necessary authority in our lives. It is a means by which we cooperate and collaborate to make life better and more orderly. In a clamoring bunch of 330 million people we need such order. Pretty simple in my book. But then the Bundys live in the wide open spaces and see open skies and vistas where the rest of us look out our windows at other houses, walls, streets and buildings. Crowded, eh?

The Malheur Refuge is ours to have, hold and maintain. It is not for the Bundys and their friends to steal, use or destroy. And that’s the truth.

Order, Mr. Bundy. Order in the House, and in the nation. I choose to allow federal authority to do some of the work I cannot do for myself or for you. We all give up something to gain something. And this is it, sir. Comity among hundreds of millions of people.

Get over it. And remove yourselves peacefully from our land.

Thank you very much!

January 27, 2016