Adams and Natural Law
The Queen talked about God
The Cuates
By Stephen L. Wilmeth
For too long, the countryside has been treated like a
museum, held back by an outdated system that has frustrated economic growth.
~ Mark Bridgeman
The past days have been a mix of old and new.
We have
been working cattle. Seeking later calves, our normal branding cycle has been
delayed further into the year from prevailing practices. The weather,
particularly the lessening of heat, is one of the benefits for both man and
animal.
A call to
my pastor last week announced we wouldn’t be at church. We just needed to get these
calves done and the pasture moved before next week’s schedule becomes yet more
complicated. So, we gathered and branded in two big work cycles.
The
prevailing language spoken in the branding pens was again Spanish. That is a
trend we are all facing as the scarcity of labor worsens. To that point,
though, there are age old benefits from working with men (and women) who have
learned the craft from those who have come before, who demonstrate a deep-seated
work ethic, who remain respectful of the system that has created our heritage,
and fundamentally make their spiritual life the guiding factor of life. Old
virtues remain best virtues.
When we
broke for lunch, we joined hands, and grace was offered.
That act of
faith is also part of the legacy that Queen Elizabeth left the world. As the
Queen who talked about God, something very important has been lost in her
passing as the something progressive mobs continue to gain footing.
Who knew
she had a dairy? She had a 200 head Jersey dairy that was largely built around
the idea of selling milk and cream for the purpose of making Windsor Ice Cream.
The fact that the Queen was often seen walking through the milking parlor and
inspecting her stock and her operation should give every agriculturist a different
glimpse of her. Nobody vested in a primary production enterprise can be swayed
away from matters of natura law and contract with the land. Smelling the sweet smell
of cows up close has a way of revealing many things.
The dairy
operation wasn’t her only primary tie to the land. She rode. She hunted. She
had a Sussex beef herd. She had 140 breeding sows. She had 1500 laying Lohmann
browns. She had a 1000-acre farming operation, and she had a 2000-acre
grassland dedicated to primary feedstocks. She was also a trained wartime
mechanic who insisted on checking mechanical issues to make sure it wasn’t
something simple she could fix. She was more of a steady and practical force of
society than most of us ever realized. Politics was not her priority.
True ethics, spirituality, and
natural law were, and she did it without calling attention to herself or her
station in life.
Adams and Natural Law
The more time that passes reveals
how little we learned about our history.
For example, John Adams was
arguably a proxy for the role of Queen Elizabeth in the early days of our
Union. He dabbled in many things, but, early on, he was captured in the
embraces of agriculture as much as his devotion to Christianity and his evolution
into the practice of law in its most basic tenets.
It was Adams who finally interpreted
for me what natural law truly is. The explanation lies, in part, in a quote
from him.
Self-preservation is the first
law of nature, Self-love is the strongest principle in our breasts, and self-preservation
(is) not only our unalienable right but our clearest duty, by the law of nature.
Lo and behold, the individual is
the strength of this Union, not the government and its legions of mobs.
Further, the individual must prevail to preserve this Union.
Not only he who on assault
retreats to a wall, or some such straight beyond which he can go no further,
before he kills the other, is judged by the law to act upon unavoidable
necessity.
This completely flies in the face
of our times when the perpetrator has become the protagonist and the victim is
relegated to obscurity. Adams wouldn’t agree at all with today’s legal system.
Further, he warned of bureaucracies
long before the modern displacement of elected officials by protected and
unelected officials. The clue comes from a quote from his representation of
John Hancock who had been denied the fundamental right of a trial by jury by an
appointed administrator.
My client, Mr. Hancock never
consented to it (the process to resolve the charge); he never voted for
it himself, and he never voted for any man to make such a law for him.
Ask any federal lands rancher if
the implications of that are not fully manifested in today’s governmental land
management relationships. As the case continued, Adams became disgusted with
the court and the officers of the Crown that were involved. In the end, Adams’
knowledge of law, his persistence and his unwavering persona got the case
suspended. If only the unequal states of the West had such an effective
advocate through time, the condition of these lands would be much different
than they are today.
Managing for political agendas as
opposed to natural law has consequences.
The Cuates
Of course, that brings the matter
to the emergence of the cuates.
That reference would have been
perfectly understood in the branding corral where
Spanish was the language. The image, however, comes from the numerous photos
that have emerged that capture the apparent joy that is expressed between the cheesy
fellow that spends a few nights most weeks at the people’s house and his buddy,
the Queen’s get and the new king (once referencing himself as the human tampon divulged
from his love letters to what was then his girlfriend, but now dubbed, the
queen consort).
These characters are twins.
They have no interest in inspecting
a dairy. Their roles are theoretical. The relationship of land and natural law
to them is undefined. Together, there will be even less moral compass as a
world vision of disruption and division will rule ever more supreme.
God Save the Queen has
serious implications.
Stephen
L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico. “May God help us all.”
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