This Land is Your Land...

Oregon Live

Hugh Farnham returned this past week, and his blog post on gun confiscation sparked a rousing and wide-ranging conversation.

Oregon Standoff Continues
Ducky wrote a free-wheeling and substantive comment about the Citizens for Constitutional Freedom's armed occupation of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in Harney County, Oregon. (which was sparked, btw, by Federal prosecutorial lawfare and vindictive abuse of federal power). His comment got stuck in the potty-mouth filter, so I freed it and responded, but by then the thread was dead, so I carry the conversation forward...

Ducky said...

Interesting that you bring up cattle ranchers since they have a significant link to our current gun culture.  Go back to the Johnson County Wars and the "regulators" hired by the large ranchers in order to enforce what was largely a feudal system. 

Our friend from Boston has nailed it: This is a Jungian clash of iconic images: metrosexual v. marlboro man; city dwellers against those who make their home out on the range; the gulf between professional progressives and the rarely-seen rough men and women who produce our food, mine our energy and do the gritty work of keeping the nation's infrastructure going.

Face it:  We are all pissed off and we hate each other. Lefties are having a giggling good time...

"Welfare queens", "domestic terrorists", "they didn't bring enough snacks", "middle-aged male sleepover", "bravely invaded a wildlife refuge"...

Ducky Said...

Throw in the central management to avoid overgrazing and land deterioration and you wonder what those welfare queens are trying to accomplish.

My Response...

First off, overgrazing is not an issue now like it was 150 years ago. Back then, the mentality was different, tragedy of the commons, people just acted like the land went on forever, because, in a way, it did.

Today, that's not the case. Ranchers have a vested interest in the land because they cannot just move on once they've wrecked everything.  If you're concerned about such slash-and-burn, go tax and regulate the third-world rubber-tappers, inefficient ranchers and farmers and sell-outs to global corporations.  Remember the rain forest?

Ducky Said...

Silverfiddle has stated here that he doesn't think the Bundy boys should have to pay any range fees. Never mind that the cost of maintaining grazing land is not covered by their subsidized fees. Scrape away all the bullshit arguments about the Bundy hoser boys having their land stolen (an argument they don't even make, they accept STATE sovereignty) and you get down to what they are ... a bunch of welfare queens.

Have you ever been out here and seen these lands? The government does nothing to maintain them because there is nothing to maintain. That land isn't costing the taxpayer anything. It's the ranchers who lease it who do the improvement, upgrades, access roads, drainage, fences, etc.

There really were range wars out here back in the 1800s, cattlemen fighting sheep grazers fighting farmers, and it usually centered more around water than land.  Local or regional authorities ended up stepping in and enforcing agreements on resource sharing. Many families, like your hated Bundy's had ancestors back in those times. They and everyone else have been operating based upon those agreements, and too often, the feds come in and imperiously bust it up because of an endangered naked mole rat, or because Harry Reed wants to give a big chunk of land to Silicon Valley green energy welfare queens.

National parks?  Sure.  But there is no reason for the federal government to own large tracts of land. Turn it over to the states, where the government is closer to the people, making recourse and debate easier and focused on the people who live there.

It is absurd and arrogant to say people out here would destroy it all without the federal government mommying them.  Wyoming and Colorado are known for their natural beauty, but natural resource mining competes with tourism for the states' money-making activities, and yes, the states can balance it all on their own, at least until a federally-owned forest starts burning, or the EPA rolls in and poisons one of our rivers...

Just as Bible-thumping hicks from Alabama should have no say in how Bostonians conduct their affairs in that historic city that is one of the crown jewels of our national patrimony, effete east coast metrosexuals have no business telling western ranchers how to run their businesses.

Links:
Oregon and the Injustice of Mandatory Minimum Sentences
Five Reasons you should side with the Hammonds