Are the Feds trying to start a fight?

Because actions like this are likely to provoke one, and not just in a courtroom, either.  Think the Bundy Family may not have deserved the support they recently received?  Fair enough.  Try this one on for size:

Henderson lost a lawsuit 30 years ago that moved part of the northern Texas border over a mile to the south.  The Bureau of Land Management [BLM] took 140 acres of his property and didn’t pay him one cent.  Now, they want to use his case as precedent to seize land along a 116-mile stretch of the river…

BLM, which oversees public land in the United States, claims this land never belonged to Texas.  The Texas landowners who have lived and cared for that land for hundreds of years beg to differ.

BLM plans on taking the land anyway. Property owners will be forced to spend money on lawsuits to keep what is theirs.  For many, that property has been in their family for generations.

“How can BLM come in and say, “Hey, this isn’t yours.” Even though it’s patented from the state, you’ve always paid taxes on it. Our family has paid taxes for over 100 years on this place. We’ve got a deed to it. But yet they walked in and said it wasn’t ours,” said Henderson.

In the spirit of “Don’t Mess with Texas,” that State’s Attorney General has sent a letter to the BLM, pointedly challenging them to provide the legal justification for what they propose.  I wonder if they will even bother to reply.  It’s not as if Federal officials are in the habit of answering questions from the peasants — or even their representatives who bother to ask them — anymore.  It is this level of arrogance that is prompting open calls for the States to convene and decide how best to reign in their overbearing agent.  That agent certainly gives no impression of being able to reform itself!

Our government acts as though eminent domain now extends to whatever they feel like grabbing (including our rights), for whatever reason.  But when you start trying to seize people’s ancestral lands or changing the rules arbitrarily to deny their way of earning a living, don’t expect them to go quietly.  Far better that Texas and Oklahoma resolve the matter of establishing a boundary, than to give the Feds a pretext to deny not 140 acres, but *another* one hundred forty  square miles (90,000 acres) of America to productive Americans!

It got very noisy in Nevada recently.  Uncle Sam keeps this up, and it may get even noisier, in a lot more places.  There are still plenty of Americans who neither want nor seek a fight, but understand that when injustice comes to them they have but two options.  And accepting it meekly is not the one that led to the creation of this country.  Anger is growing.  May wisdom and discernment grow along with it.  But remember:

“Molon labe” applies to ALL our freedoms… not just the Second Amendment.

Taxing our patience

Today’s the annual deadline for complying with the government’s demand that you tell it everything about your financial dealings so that it may take whatever pounds of flesh it deems appropriate.  We are frequently reminded that taxes are a supposedly necessary part of civilized society.  And while it’s true that having a government means having some way to fund it, far too few people question whether we are going about it in the right way.  After all, this annual April drill didn’t exist until about a century ago.  How on earth, then, did we fund ‘civilization’ before that?

Rather than subsidizing government in general, the way cable companies “bundle” channels nobody has any interest in buying individually, what if most of government were funded via user fees?  Such a structure would allow for ‘economic voting,’ and would reveal quickly just how much government Americans are actually willing to pay for.  It would also eliminate the ridiculously burdensome drill by which Americans hand far too much personal information to the government.

Remember: long before the IRS scandal came to light, our current president “joked” about auditing his political enemies.  Doesn’t seem so funny now, does it?

We shouldn’t be handing the government so much information, and we don’t need to be handing it so many powers and resources, either.  There have been too many instances of questionable judgment or outright corruption and cronyism to believe it’s wise to vest so much in an institution that is difficult to hold accountable.  Plenty of us are getting tired of Congress passing legislation without any thought as to what’s in it, or whether it’s really within their Constitutional purview.  We’re also tired of executive agencies run amok, with Congress too timid to fully confront and reign them in.

Fortunately, some Americans seem to be asking the right questions now.  Why, for instance, does it seem every Federal agency now has an armed enforcement branch… and why are they all buying large quantities of ammunition in recent months?  Why is the Defense Department handing out heavy weaponry to local law enforcement agencies like it’s Christmas all year long?  Given the ridiculous number of “no-knock” raids in this country, and the needless violence they involve, is this really promotion of “establishing justice” and “ensuring domestic tranquility?”

In the current climate, where we now have every reason to question the true motives of federal agencies, it’s no wonder so many people came to the defense of Cliven Bundy.  Whether he and his family were deserving of the support is no longer the point.  The point is there is enough mistrust of our own government that many are not willing to give it the benefit of the doubt.  When it comes to the war for public opinion, the Federals have squandered the reservoir of trust, and that is a serious tragedy.

If we are fortunate, those who are truly trying to serve the American people in a public capacity are now asking themselves hard questions about why their role is viewed with suspicion and contempt.  Otherwise, we’re likely to see more scenes like these in the years ahead…

 

Carefully choose the ground

It seems a confrontation is brewing out West:

From near and wide, armed men are trickling toward Cliven Bundy’s ranch, where the rancher’s fight with the federal government has become a rallying cry for militia groups across the United States.

On Wednesday, that dispute teetered at the edge of deadly conflict, when Cliven Bundy’s family members and supporters scuffled with rangers from the Bureau of Land Management sent to protect the federal roundup of Bundy’s cattle on public land.

One of Bundy’s seven sons was shot with a stun gun, and Bundy’s sister was knocked to the ground; but no one was seriously hurt, and no arrests were made.

By late Wednesday, three militia members — two from Montana and one from Utah — had arrived at the ranch 80 miles northeast of Las Vegas. Other militia groups have inundated the Bundy household with calls and pledges to muster at the site…

“We need to be the barrier between the oppressed and the tyrants,” Ryan Payne of the West Mountain Rangers told the Review-Journal. “Expect to see a band of soldiers.”

To put this in context, it’s not only armed ‘militia’ who are trickling toward the ranch: the government also has been steadily reinforcing its armed agents in the area, as they round up and impound the Bundy family’s herd of cattle.

The issue at stake is a multi-faceted one, involving the competing priorities of a private livelihood and family legacy, protection of endangered species, and the management of public lands.  Some appear to believe it’s a simple case of the government enforcing a penalty for of non-payment of fees.  Others see a deeper pattern in the exercise of government power.  At a minimum, it’s noteworthy that State and local officials have also expressed concern over Federal actions, which have included closing off access to an area half the size of Delaware, and limiting protestors to designated “First Amendment areas.”  (Note to Uncle Sam: regardless whether your actions are legitimate in this case, ALL OF AMERICA is a “Free Speech Zone!”)  It’s also worth noting for those who focus on the issue of fees that this is another illustration that ‘the power to tax is also the power to destroy.’

I have not yet reached any conclusions as to who is in the right here, though I am admittedly skeptical of our Federal overlords and what appears to be some pretty heavy-handed tactics they are currently employing.  That said, if indeed there are additional individuals and ‘militia groups’ headed to Nevada, I hope they have taken time to thoroughly research this issue, and know what they are getting involved in.  There is an irresponsible eagerness in some quarters to “bring it on” when talking about combating Federal abusiveness.  Taking a stand against government overreach is important, and I think it increasingly likely Americans in this generation will have to draw a physical line in the sand against the ever-encroaching power of the State.

Just make sure if that day comes that you can justify your ground, and leave no question as to who was the aggressor and who was the aggrieved.  Freedom has been under assault for some time now.  Care must be taken not to discredit it as well.