The Bundy Ranch: Raising Cattle and Eyebrows

Eighty miles away from the National Atomic Testing Museum in Las Vegas Nevada, another ecological disaster has been brewing for decades, a disaster that threatens the very existence of a species, of desert tortoise.

This is just one of the hundreds of ways the events in Nevada are being interpreted.

If you haven’t been following the unfolding drama at the Bundy Ranch, you probably should take an interest. The escalating confrontation between irate residents from both Nevada and as far as New Hampshire, and the federal agents of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) still has the potential to take a very dangerous turn for the worse in the coming days as a quick and easily resolution to the tensions has not presented itself, as hundreds of militia members from states across the country have descended upon the area and make a stand with cattle rancher Cliven Bundy.

Before we delve too far into whether this 67-year-old Nevada rancher home will be the next Lexington,we need a little background on the situation. As I hinted at above, this saga has been ongoing for two decades and the issue at hand is whether or not Mr. Bundy can graze his 900 head of cattle on a particular section of public lands in Clark County. On top of not paying federal grazing fees for over 20 years, Cliven Bundy has recently been ordered to stop all together on environmental grounds to protect the desert tortoise, but he has stood his ground time and time again. As a result, the feds have now entered the area and are impounding his cattle. According to CNN, Between Saturday and Wednesday, BLM contracted wranglers impounded a total of 352 cattle.

The irony of our government that has in it's checkered history a time of forcing people off of reservations when it was politically expedient for them and set off nuclear weapons in the name of strengthening our geopolitical power now forbids a private citizen from using public lands for something as passe as cattle herding in the name of defending a specific type of tortoise not withstanding, what is the federal government doing wrong here? There are laws, Cliven Bundy is breaking the laws, what is the federal government, through the BLM, doing wrong here?

From here the speculation and reasoning seems to diverge more times then mandates change in the Affordable Care Act. Some people are arguing a states rights case in which the Federal government shouldn't have authority over something as mundane as how a bunch of acres thousands of miles away from Washington gets used. Others say it's a taxation issue, if the Bundy's simply payed their fees for using the land, there is no problem. Others yet an escalation issue in which sees the photo's of the Bundy family being attacked and tased under questionable circumstance.

I think there is one glaringly simple, obvious reason that this issue has been so invigorating to such a large group of people.

People do not like the government.

Perhaps it's as simple as they don't like being told what to do. Perhaps they are insulted by being treated (ironically) like cattle when attempting to exercise their first amendment rights. Perhaps they feel they are second class to a desert filled with tortoises. Perhaps they feel people's ancestral rights trump more recently formed agencies authority (though try explaining that to any number of American Indian tribes). Perhaps it's a story built up over the generations of seeing fellow ranchers moving away from their homes because cattle ranching has become such an unprofitable venture in the area, yet they see their own taxes and fees continue to rise under a premise of the 'greater good', while the overseeing representation is a world away.

This is where we enter the fascinating aspect of what is developing, were many people who are rising up in support of the Bundy family become less interested about what is wrong by the letter of the law, and rather by a much more fundamental notion of governmental overreach; remember, we are not talking about city, county, or even state enforcement. A brother agency to departments that spy on other nations, command fleets of ships, or researches breakthrough new medicines is in charge of herding cattle at gunpoint.

I ask myself what would happen if I stopped paying taxes, I would get cited, wages garnished, I may even get property repossessed, though I would no expect a small army of agents to come barreling down my street to escort a tow truck if the federal government felt the need to take my car as payment of back taxes. This issue is more complicated for a myriad of reasons, all of which don't seem to justify some of the images coming out of the news stories.

To me, the argument of who is right and who is wrong by law in this situation is the least interesting part of the story. Bundy is on the wrong side of the law, laws that he has no avenue to challenge against except by the very people that established these laws. He is not dissuaded when he looses these court battles because he knows he can not win this battle in a court. When a politician wants to change the law, they regularly take their argument to the people and campaign for change. Civility is called for as the debate takes place. I ask, what is so different in what Cliven Bundy is doing from his own front doorstep?