By William Perry Pendley
For casual news watchers, reports that a
rancher in Clark County, Nev., is at odds with federal land bureaucrats,
that scores of federal lawyers are litigating against him, and that
SWAT-garbed and heavily armed federal law-enforcement officers have got
his place surrounded was shocking news.
But westerners — especially rural westerners who make a living on the federal lands that predominate beyond the hundredth meridian, by logging, mining, ranching, camping, or developing energy resources — were not surprised by the rancher uprising after the Bureau of Land Management seized hundreds of heads of cattle from rancher Cliven Bundy.
Thanks in part to negotiations by a local sheriff, the overreaction by federal officials, with snipers at the ready, has so far stopped short of the deadly escalations under other administrations, Republican and Democrat, at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and Waco, Texas. But Washington officials need to remember what happened years ago in those faraway places, reflect on the lessons learned there, and remonstrate in favor of restraint. That’s not likely because the Obama administration possesses a mindset unlike that of any other administration in history.
In April 2009, the Obama Department of Homeland Security (DHS) published Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment, which targeted unnamed individuals and groups because of their views on illegal immigration; centralizing power in Washington, D.C., rather than in state and local governments; restricting the right to keep and bear arms; abortion; and the loss of American sovereignty.
The report, issued under then–DHS secretary Janet Napolitano, asserted that people espousing these views are right-wing extremists and are or could become members of right-wing terrorist groups and that both pose a threat to national security. Of special concern were military veterans returning from service in Iraq and Afghanistan, given their combat skills and experience. Napolitano sent the report to sheriffs and police departments across the country with instructions that they report any sightings to the DHS.
The Obama administration was not unique, however, in its eager, early, and extended embrace of policies anathema to the American West. On that score it followed the examples of the presidencies of Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, both of whom heeded the demands of those whom President Reagan called “environmental extremists” or “modern-day Luddites.”
In the late 1970s, Carter’s “War on the West” spawned the Sagebrush Rebellion, which Governor Reagan welcomed by saying, “I am a Sagebrush rebel.” Reagan, as governor of California, a vast public-lands state (nearly half is federally owned), knew what most Americans do not: that the federal government owns a third of the country. Most of that land is in the eleven western states and Alaska. In rural western counties, the federal government owns upward of 60, 70, 80, and even 90 percent of the land.
Pendley is the author of War on the West: Government Tyranny on America's Great Frontier (1995), Warriors for the West: Fighting Bureaucrats, Radical Groups, And Liberal Judges on America's Frontier (2006), and the recently published Sagebrush Rebel: Reagan’s Battle with Environmental Extremists and Why It Matters Today
But westerners — especially rural westerners who make a living on the federal lands that predominate beyond the hundredth meridian, by logging, mining, ranching, camping, or developing energy resources — were not surprised by the rancher uprising after the Bureau of Land Management seized hundreds of heads of cattle from rancher Cliven Bundy.
Thanks in part to negotiations by a local sheriff, the overreaction by federal officials, with snipers at the ready, has so far stopped short of the deadly escalations under other administrations, Republican and Democrat, at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and Waco, Texas. But Washington officials need to remember what happened years ago in those faraway places, reflect on the lessons learned there, and remonstrate in favor of restraint. That’s not likely because the Obama administration possesses a mindset unlike that of any other administration in history.
In April 2009, the Obama Department of Homeland Security (DHS) published Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment, which targeted unnamed individuals and groups because of their views on illegal immigration; centralizing power in Washington, D.C., rather than in state and local governments; restricting the right to keep and bear arms; abortion; and the loss of American sovereignty.
The report, issued under then–DHS secretary Janet Napolitano, asserted that people espousing these views are right-wing extremists and are or could become members of right-wing terrorist groups and that both pose a threat to national security. Of special concern were military veterans returning from service in Iraq and Afghanistan, given their combat skills and experience. Napolitano sent the report to sheriffs and police departments across the country with instructions that they report any sightings to the DHS.
The Obama administration was not unique, however, in its eager, early, and extended embrace of policies anathema to the American West. On that score it followed the examples of the presidencies of Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, both of whom heeded the demands of those whom President Reagan called “environmental extremists” or “modern-day Luddites.”
In the late 1970s, Carter’s “War on the West” spawned the Sagebrush Rebellion, which Governor Reagan welcomed by saying, “I am a Sagebrush rebel.” Reagan, as governor of California, a vast public-lands state (nearly half is federally owned), knew what most Americans do not: that the federal government owns a third of the country. Most of that land is in the eleven western states and Alaska. In rural western counties, the federal government owns upward of 60, 70, 80, and even 90 percent of the land.
Pendley is the author of War on the West: Government Tyranny on America's Great Frontier (1995), Warriors for the West: Fighting Bureaucrats, Radical Groups, And Liberal Judges on America's Frontier (2006), and the recently published Sagebrush Rebel: Reagan’s Battle with Environmental Extremists and Why It Matters Today
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