There were the Ruby Ridge and Waco shootouts, which caused such sanctimonious indignation among Conservatives. On the Left, we had that incident where armed Sioux Reservation Indians shot it out with the Feds, and there was that group of armed black insurgents in Philadelphia who were eventually flushed out by an air strike (actually, a police helicopter dropped incendiaries on their row house, and a whole block of innocent families had their homes burned to the ground in the ensuing conflagration). Several of the protesters were killed, by police gunfire, as I recall.

I seem to recall other similar incidents involving rebels on both Right and Left that ended in gunfire. I have little sympathy for them, regardless of their politics. There is no bigger coward than a man with a gun who expects his opponents to not shoot back.

In my opinion, I have some sympathy with troublemakers who occupy buildings, obstruct traffic, etc. If they are non-violent and unarmed, an attempt should be made to hear their case, and let them make their point, but if they continue to resist and make their presence a continuing nuisance, they should be be removed, peacefully if possible, and by truncheon-swinging gendarmerie if necessary. But as long as the demonstrators do not resort to firearms, the authorities have to eventually restore order. A variety of semi-lethal strategies are now available as well in the event of escalation, such as rubber bullets and tear gas.

As for the protesters, they should honor our country’s tradition of non-violent protest and suffer the consequences of civil disobedience: arrest and jail. This was MLK’s method, and it worked. It was the Bull Connors and his uniformed bigots that showed their true colors and disgraced themselves with violence. Citizens must have the right to offer peaceful protest, and even to escalate it by accepting arrest and jail. But when violence is offered to the authorities, the authorities are justified, even obligated, to defend themselves. Restraint should be used, you don’t open fire on kids flipping you the bird, but bricks and Molotov Cocktails require a vigorous response.

Yes, there is a big difference between Malheur and the Bundy gang and the Occupy movement. The latter did not bring guns. These Mickey Mouse Minutemen out West should learn you never pull a gun unless you intend to use it, and you should never use a gun unless someone shoots at you first. Your reluctance to pay taxes does not give you the right to endanger another man’s life, even if Jesus and the founding fathers are allegedly on your side.

And, I thought it was OK for the Occupiers to do what they did. Admired them, sympathized with their goals.

And what’s the difference, really. Well, the cross-bearing, flag waving folks with sidearms and rifles threatened mayhem. That’s what their sidearms and rifles are for. (Don’t tell me they were hunting.)

The Occupiers weren’t armed. If they were the cops would have gone nuts, just plain crazy. However, they let the folks in Malheur carry weapons, that was just fine. Don’t know why. I’m sure there is some good reason.

Guy had his house surrounded by police. “Call off your dogs”, he tells me.

I can’t, I reply. They’re your dogs. They have to see you’re all right before they can leave.

Made sense to him, he put down his sidearm and opened the back door. They jumped him.

That was after a standoff from 7:15 AM to 5:30 PM.

The most frustrating matter was the woman who insisted she was going to win the lottery, her guru told her, and she needed to demonstrate complete faith in him for it to happen. She had liquidated her families assets and was going to send them overseas someplace to the guru. In exchange, she got the lottery. And with every fiber of her being she believed.

Some people are nuts.

Greedy, selfish bastards trying to masquerade as patriots, poor, abused, hard-working Americans.

They aren’t. They should have been shot while the FBI had the chance.

The amateur negotiators made some mistakes for sure, especially when alluding to suicide as the cowards way out, but they did an admirable job of it on the whole. I wish we could have heard both sides of the conversation with the FBI negotiator. Especially at the end, they were the professionals. The amateurs did a reasonable job of calming him down, but I’d like to know what was said by the pro that actually got him walking out.

Anyway the threat is over. I don’t doubt these guys are going to continue having issues though. I think the state should release everything they have on the killing of Finicum. From the footage that was released, I believe it was a justified shooting by the state police. The man had a death wish and got his wish. Luckily he was the only one to get his wish.

The ownership of land is also a violent act. It must always be taken by force from someone who already uses or occupies it. Oh sure, it is possible to conceive of settlers moving into uninhabited territory and homesteading it, like Pacific islanders sailing into the Hawaian archipelago. But after millions of years of human occupation, very few lands are actually virgin and unknown to human settlement. Even the trackless wastes of the ocean, if they can be exploited, are controlled by those who have the maritime technology to travel on them, fish in them, fence them in with ports and navies, and drive off those who would rather take it for their own purposes. Granted, with civilization and law, we have evolved more peaceful and equitable procedures for the transfer of land through regulated and negotiated commerce and sale. But this comes later, after things settle down. The first owner, and often the first few, always takes it, usually at the point of a sword.

The lands of the American West are no different. We took them by force from the aboriginal inhabitants; or we took it by force from the Mexicans who took it from the original inhabitants. No doubt the Indians themselves fought over those tracts they perceived had value, as hunting grounds or as easily defensible parcels defining water and other natural resources. The Indians may have had different ideas about property and real estate than the Europeans, but land ownership was negotiated with steel and gunpowder. Law and commerce came later. Even after the coming of the white man, it wasn’t until the Law and the State arrived much later, with more bayonets, that the genteel form of land transfer we have today became possible. And by that time, all the good stuff had already been carved up and parceled out.

But our country is vast, and most of it is still empty. The vast bulk of the land was too dry, or too desolate, or too remote to be commercially developable. Nobody wanted it. So vast tracts of it wound up owned by the government. Occasionally, changing patterns of settlement or new technologies made some of these lands attractive to private ownership. The State had the authority and responsibility to manage these lands for the public interest, and although there were contradictions and problems, this worked out fairly well. Land use was determined by government, and whether the land was open to logging, grazing, mining, agriculture or recreation came to be determined through a complex set of leases and and legislation, open to political and commercial influence, not to mention outrageous lobbying and corruption. Even with its problems, and shortcomings, this system served a useful purpose. Most of the land in the west is fragile, easily damaged by overdevelopment and over utilization. By the time the frontier had started to vanish, over a century ago, a vast system of government land management and land use practices had been established.

But as the population increased, demands on these wild lands mounted. There was pressure to overdevelop and overutilize the resource, move in, mine the wealth, and get out. When you don’t own the land, it doesn’t pay much to take care of it, and if the land is fragile, you are pressured economically to rape it and leave, not invest and protect it. Who wants to own and pay taxes on real estate that is only profitable when its overgrazed, or overlogged, or overmined, or has all its water resources diverted to be used somewhere else? Yeah, rape is the right word. Wham bang thank you ma’m.

Combine this economic pressure to take and take and never put anything back with a cultural cowboy ethos and history of land grab and range war and you get the welfare cowboys like the Bundys. And of course, they’ll cloak their greed and rapacity with all sorts of free enterprise rhetoric and patriotic doubletalk, and back it up with the permission provided by a history of firearms and tough guy violence. Bull. They just want to get rich by spoiling MY land, after which they will leave it desolate, denuded, eroded and sterile while they cavalierly march off to despoil some other place that doesn’t belong to them either.

Does the Federal land use and management system in the west need reform and updating? I don’t doubt it does. Is too much land under State control? I don’t doubt that either. Land should be used for the public good, and wherever possible that use should be undertaken by the private sector, who can provide value for the nation as well as jobs and profits for the operators. If that means selling it to the highest bidder, then so be it. But we must count on the State to manage this process in an orderly manner, one which maximizes the value received and protects and conserves the land as a perpetual resource for the whole nation, not just a get-rich-quick business opportunity for a handful of greasy pirates.

Yeah, those greedy redneck creeps were on MY land, not theirs. If I were the government, I would have dislodged them with air strikes the moment they started brandishing firearms. They have a right to demonstrate, not to threaten violence.

“Get off my estate.”
“What for?”
“Because its mine.”
“Where did you get it?”
“From my father.”
“Where did he get it?”
“From his father.”
“And where did he get it?”
“He fought for it.”
“Well, I’ll fight you for it.”

from The People, Yes
Carl Sandburg

I think the ignominious end of all this is for the best. There’s been only one death instead of the bloodbath the occupiers promised. A lot of people are, perhaps, embarrassed, but at least they’re alive to be embarrassed. ‘Course, they’re also alive to nurse their grievances, but that’s a fight for another day.