Is Bundy's Protest Tarnishing the Tea Party? (Weekly Standard jumping the shark?)

The Weekly Standard ^ | April 22, 2013 | Michael Warren

[2ndDivisionVet]

Senior writer John McCormack joined Greta van Susteren's political panel Monday on Fox News to discuss the protest at the Bundy ranch in Nevada. Watch the video below:

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)

Meanwhile, in this week's issue, the Scrapbook writes about the problems with Cliven Bundy's cause:

Twenty years ago, the federal government, which owns the land on which Bundy grazes his 900 cattle, decided to impose a grazing fee. Bundy opposes that fee, has consistently refused to pay it, and the federal Bureau of Land Management now claims that he owes $1 million in unpaid fees. Bundy has challenged the grazing fee in federal court—indeed, has challenged the federal government’s title to land in Nevada—and has consistently lost. Sixteen years ago, a federal judge issued a permanent injunction against Bundy, ordering the removal of his cattle. Bundy appealed that ruling to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and lost again. Last August, a federal court gave Bundy 45 days to remove his cattle, and in October, a federal district judge ordered Bundy not to “physically interfere with any seizure or impoundment operation.”

This does not sound to The Scrapbook like the dread hand of tyranny, in Nevada or Washington, oppressing an innocent farmer, or pushing some law-abiding citizen around. It sounds, instead, like a rancher gaming the system to his own financial advantage, and disguising his scheme in populist rhetoric: refusing to pay a tax which others must pay, and “tying up the courts”—for two decades!—as he continues to ignore the law. Far from acting in an arbitrary or capricious manner, the federal government has shown patience and forbearance in the face of lawlessness that customarily lands people in jail. It is worth noting that Bundy’s rancher-neighbors and the Nevada Cattlemen’s Association, who contend with the same federal policies, offer him little support.

Bundy has exercised his First Amendment right to plead his case publicly and inflame his admirers. And inflamed they have been: A few hundred people from around the country converged on Nye County, Nevada—many armed and brandishing weapons—to disrupt the government’s attempt to enforce the law, taunting and attacking agents dutifully carrying out the orders of a federal court. Last week, fearful of violence, the BLM suspended its roundup and withdrew from the area.

This is no victory for anyone other than Bundy and, The Scrapbook hopes, a temporary one at that. There is a term to describe the people who surround him, and it isn’t “militia.” The word is “mob.” And what this mob has practiced is not civil disobedience but armed provocation of a democratic government which has afforded Cliven Bundy every right and privilege as a citizen. One of Bundy’s supporters boasted to the press that “we were actually strategizing to put all the women up at the front.” This is the same spirit that animates people who attack firemen during riots, or opposed school integration with violence in Little Rock, Arkansas. In that case, 57 years ago, President Eisenhower was obliged to send the 101st Airborne because, as he said, “mob rule cannot be allowed to override the decisions of our courts.”

What was true then remains true today. Cliven Bundy is no hero of any kind. No conservative would pick and choose the laws he intends to obey, defy the rest, and challenge the rule of democracy with guns. No hero would adopt the terrorist’s tactic of placing innocents in harm’s way. Any fool can pick up a weapon and aim at an officer of the law; the moral power of civil disobedience lies in the willingness to defer to the law and accept punishment on principle.

[goat granny]

thank you :O)

[ponygirl]

“Clark County property records show Cliven Bundy’s parents bought the 160 acre ranch in 1948 from Raoul and Ruth Leavitt. Water rights were transferred too, but only to the ranch, not the federally managed land surrounding it. Court records show Bundy family cattle didn’t start grazing on that land until 1954.”

YT Video of Ryan Bundy press conference 4/25/14

Transcript Excerpt, response to question regarding the ancestral claims to the grazing rights:
Ryan Bundy: Sure I can. Okay, if you are following the Bundy family, we originally came from Nebraska, and my great-great-grandmother joined the Mormon church, the LDS church…the missionaries back then were from Bunkerville, the missionary was...and my g-g grandmother joined the Mormon church in Nebraska. Now she wanted to come west, and my g-g-grandfather did not. He did join the church…. until… there was an incident… people were mean to my grandmother, and so he said, ‘All right, let’s go west,” and on the trail he decided also to join the church and he was baptized in Logan, Utah. They came to Bunkerville because of the missionary that was from Bunkerville. His name was actually Bunker, Elder Bunker. And so they came to Bunkerville originally.

Now they didn’t settle down right away. They bought some land down in Beaver Dam, Arizona, which is just across the border. But then they moved to Mexico, to the Mormon colonies in Mexico. And then they came… uh, well… then there was the Mexican-American War. And the United States government said to the people coming out of there… they sent them to anywhere they wanted to [go]. So they had some friends or something, and they went clear up to Oregon. They went to Oregon and things didn’t work out there for them, so they came back here to Beaver Dam. And I don’t know why they didn’t stay in Beaver Dam again, but then they went down to St. Thomas and [Kaylin?], which… those are two towns that are now under Lake Mead. So they’re ghost towns now. But it was awful hot, awful dry, so they were looking for a little cool weather, and they went back over to Arizona, to the Arizona strip, to Mount Trumbull, and they finally settled down there on Mount Trumbull. And so the Bundy family did come from that area.

Now what everybody is not considering is the other side of my family. All right? My grandmother, who was a Jensen, who had family ties to the names of Abbott and to Levitt and to Adams, she grew up here in Mesquite. Now our range rights here on this Bunkerville mountain here, actually started with my grandmother’s side. Now when my grandfather met my grandmother and married her, he moved back over to here, which again, we had old ties… kinda moving around… but we still had some old ties here and he married my grandmother, and they inherited some of the old range rights from my grandmother’s side. So when people are saying that the Bundy’s weren’t here until such and such a date, and they didn’t have the range rights here until such… You know what? They’re right. But they’re not considering the range rights that were here from my grandmother, all right? And so our rights do trace back to 1877. Not all the way in the Bundy family name, but through some of these other names.

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I know from my own family research that moving around this many times was not unusual once the new lands were opened. I have a family that started in Ohio, then to Cook County, Illinois, to Wisconsin, then to Missouri, then to Kansas, and then finally back to Wisconsin. The only way I was able to find them was due to the discovery of a journal the wife kept during those times. But these Mormon families know their family histories... it's a requirement in the LDS church.