Category Archives: The State

Why The Land Belongs To Bundy

Justice, libertarianism, Natural Law, Private Property, States' Rights, Taxation, The State

The current column, now on WND, applies the doctrine of natural law and Lockean homesteading to explain “Why The Land Belongs To Bundy.” (Cliven Bundy is the farmer from Nevada who is “in mutiny against the federal government”) The essay exposes “both political factions” for “siding with the state and against natural law,” and explains why, ethically and logically, there is no such things as “government grass.”

Here’s a short excerpt from the (middle of) the essay:

NO SUCH THING AS ‘GOVERNMENT GRASS’

Unlike the positive law, which is state-created; natural law in not enacted. Rather, it is a higher law—a system of ethics—knowable through reason, revelation and experience. “By natural law,” propounded McClellan in “Liberty, Order, And Justice,” “we mean those principles which are inherent in man’s nature as a rational, moral, and social being, and which cannot be casually ignored.”

Tamara Holder, another Democrat, grasps the natural law not at all. “Can I go into your house and steal stuff; can I trespass onto your land?” she hollered at Sean Hannity. Holder, of course, was implying that the disputed land belonged to the state and was as good as the government’s house.

In siding with the heroic homesteader against the BLM, Mr. Hannity’s heart is in the right place. He and Fox News colleague Greta Van Susteren probably staved off a Waco-style massacre, in Bunkerville. When the militarized BLM, SAWT teams and all, trained sights on the Bundy family and their supporters; the two turned the cameras on the aggressors, who then retreated.

In the course of butting against buttheads like Holder, however, Mr. Hannity has refused to engage his head. (The anchor, moreover, is performing no public service when he gives this and other prototypical TV tarts a platform from which to spread ignorance.) Ms. Holder: the government doesn’t have a house. There is no such thing as “government grass”! Not in natural law. Government cannot morally claim to own “public property,” explain Linda and Morris Tannehill, in “The Market For Liberty.” “Government doesn’t produce anything. Whatever it has, it has as a result of expropriation. It is no more correct to call the expropriated wealth in government’s possession property than it is to say that a thief rightfully owns the loot he has stolen.”

Then there is the matter of logic. “The public” is an abstraction. In logic, an abstraction cannot possess property. To borrow from libertarian political philosopher Murray Rothbard, “There is no existing entity called ‘society’—there are only interacting individuals.” To say that “society” should own property in common is essentially to say that “government bureaucrats” should own property, in our case, at the expense of the dispossessed homesteader. …

… Read the complete essay. “Why The Land Belongs To Bundy” is now on WND.

State Theft Of Private Property Sets Legal Precedent For More Of The Same

America, Law, Private Property, South-Africa, Taxation, The State

With its monopoly over both law enforcement and “justice,” the state has seen to it that systematic theft serves as legal precedent.

“Long before Cliven Bundy faced down federal agents,” reports Fox News (who else?), “in his dispute with the Bureau of Land Management over grazing rights, fellow Nevada rancher Raymond Yowell, an 84-year-old former Shoshone chief, watched as the BLM seized his herd.”

Adding to that, since 2008 they’ve taken his money as well — in the form of a piece of his Social Security checks.

Yowell’s 132 head of cattle had grazed for decades on the South Fork Western Shoshone Indian Reservation in northeastern Nevada until 2002, when the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) — the same agency at odds with Bundy — seized them. The federal agency sold the cattle at auction and used the proceeds to pay off the portion of back grazing fees it claimed Yowell owed. Once the cattle was sold, the agency sent Yowell a bill for the outstanding balance, some $180,000. They’ve been garnishing his monthly Social Security checks since 2008 to satisfy the debt Yowell says he does not owe.

Tommy Henderson is another victim of state plunder of private property:

The Bureau of Land Management [BLM] took 140 acres of his property and didn’t pay him one cent.
Now, they want to use his case as precedent to seize land along a 116-mile stretch of the river …

In “Into the Cannibal’s Pot,” the issue of land grabs by the ANC, in South Africa, was addressed extensively, down to the heart-breaking mutilation of livestock by state-supported squatters, in the effort to hasten the ethnic cleansing of the Afrikaner farmer. The parallels to what is underway in the USA are greater than even I had foreseen.

UPDATED: Rage Against The Machine & For The Rancher

Justice, Law, Liberty, Natural Law, Private Property, Rights, States' Rights, The State

On April 11, we breathed a sigh of relief: “The Tyrant has disbanded, for now. But He’ll be back. Be vigilant, brave Bundys of Bunkerville, Nevada.” Indeed, as Ben Swann of “The Truth In Media Project” (Via LewRockwell.com) divulges, “Sources Inside The BLM and Las Vegas Metro Say Feds Are Planning A Raid On Bundy Home”:

… hundreds of federal agents are still at the Bundy Ranch and the area continues its status as a no-fly zone. Despite major media reports that the Nevada Bureau of Land Management is retreating, the remaining activity that still surrounds the ranch illustrates a different scenario.

Not only is the BLM not actually backing off of Cliven Bundy, Sheriff Richard Mack of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association has revealed stunning information: on Ben Swann’s radio program, Mack said that he has received intelligence from multiple, credible sources inside the BLM and the Las Vegas Metro that there is “no question” that the federal government is planning a raid on the Bundy home and the homes of their children who live on the property.

According to Mack, the so-called retreat was nothing more than theatrics. “It was a ploy to get people to back off, to get people out of the way. They weren’t expecting us to get this amount of people here. They were surprised by the numbers and so they wanted a way to get us out of here. This was a ploy to get us out of here and then they’re going after the Bundys.” Mack said that when he was at the Bundy ranch on Saturday there were an estimated 600 to 800 protesters present when federal agents were releasing the cattle. …

… Mack said that he had been told by Bundy that the federal government is actively shutting down the ranching industry, specifically in Clark County. He also revealed that there used to be 53 ranches in Clark County. All of those ranchers have been put out of business, except for Bundy who is still trying to hold on. “Every American should be outraged by it,” said Mack. The ranch has been in Bundy’s family since 1877. …

MORE.

UPDATE: What the statists are saying:

BRET BAIER, ANCHOR: Clive Bundy ranched in this particular area of Nevada since the 1880s. And he had grazing rights he says that preempts and predates, he says, the federal authority over the land. So when the federal government decided to say that the desert tortoise was endangered and took away, and there you see the tortoise, the BLM, the Bureau of Land Management, took away the grazing rights, Bundy refused to comply, and he lost in court three times. But it started this back and forth that really came to a head this weekend.

Let’s bring in our panel, Tucker Carlson, host of “Fox & Friends Weekend,” A.B. Stoddard, associate editor of The Hill, and Juan Williams, columnist with The Hill. Tucker, it seems like all parties have backed down.

The Bureau of Land Management had this in a statement, “Due to escalating tensions, the cattle have been released” — they were holding the cattle — “from enclosures in order to avoid violence and help restore order. Safety has always been our number one priority and the bureau of land management and national park service appreciates the support of those who called for a peaceful conclusion to the operation.” What about this?

TUCKER CARLSON, FOX NEWS HOST: Thanks heaven. It was moving in an ugly direction, and I think the feds exacerbated it by showing up with snarling dogs and drawn weapons. That’s appropriate when you are dealing with a drug cartel, not with an elderly rancher.

On the other hand, the Bundys don’t have a legal case that I can see, to be totally honest about it. And this is public land. This is not land that they own. And if you are going to use public land for profit, you have to pay for it, and they haven’t. And so the bottom line, and I think this is something conservatives ought to remember, if you want a ranch without any impediment at all, you have to buy your own ranch. That is the essence, that is the core principle behind private property which undergirds conservatism. So I have a lot of sympathy for the Bundys. I think they were completely mistreated by the federal government. But I still think it’s important to point out that this land does not belong to them, and that’s not a minor distinction. It’s the essence of private property. Sorry.

BAIER: A.B.?

A.B. STODDARD, ASSOCIATE EDITOR, THE HILL: It wasn’t that he was denied grazing rights. He refused to pay the grazing fees. So he could have had his cattle grazing on federal land but he refused to pay up to $1 million in grazing feeds.

So the BLM could not have bungled this more by, A, coming in and tasering his son, which then became a viral video. Agents from the BLM also came up behind Cliven Bundy’s sister and knocked her down on the ground. This is something they have been dealing with for 20 years. They knew exactly who would be there protesting with their weapons. They knew how mad everyone would be and how this would escalate. They did not plan well for this.

They have now removed all this cattle and because of raised public concerns, brought the cattle there. They are never getting that cattle off that land. The BLM is out of leverage and it’s been peacefully concluded because they have got nothing left on Mr. Bundy.

BAIER: Juan?

JUAN WILLIAMS, SENIOR EDITOR, THE HILL: Well, I think what really talking about here is conservative angst over the sense that government has grown too large, too powerful. The government controls huge swaths of the western part of this country. And even local and state officials sometimes have disputes with federal authorities.

But the fact is, as Tucker said, this is public land. And despite his claims going back to the 1880s that his more Mormon forefathers used this land, it is public land. It’s not his land. And even by his own admission he owes the government, maybe not $1 million, but $300,000 that he has not paid.

So the courts have ruled against him three times, as you said, Bret. He doesn’t have a leg to stand on in that regard. But in terms of the larger picture, I think you have to worry about Waco, you have to worry about Ruby Ridge when people start showing up with guns and saying they are willing to take on the federal government.

MORE @ Bret Baier’s Special Report

‘Putin’s Libertarians’

Foreign Policy, libertarianism, Ron Paul, Russia, The State

The proper libertarian foreign policy, in my opinion, is without the slobbering sentimentality adopted by many libertarians toward the putative push for freedom across the Middle East and beyond. Whomever—and wherever—they are, I wish freedom fighters well, but they’re on their own. Americans have their own tyrants to tackle. We no longer want to defend to the death borders not our own. I’ve promised, moreover, that when liberty deprived peoples the world over support patriots stateside (such as the Hage and Bundy families), I’d return the courtesy. It’s safe to say, however, that the world’s statists do not care about American liberties.

Not all libertarians share my detachment. Via my friend Yuri Maltsev comes another perspective on Ukraine (to which I’ve not devoted a second thought since penning “Presstitute-Cultivated Ignorance On Ukraine”). Yuri himself has written the following:

I am glad that there is a growing opposition to Putin’s regime in Russia itself. The list of eminent Russian intellectuals against aggression in Ukraine is much longer than those confused libertarians who support “Russian national interests” (Mises and Hayek would detest such an expression). …
There is nothing libertarian in the neo-Stalinist Putin’s regime. Stalinism is an exact opposite of freedom. It is the same as to embrace Hitler just because he disliked FDR. Enemy of my enemy is not necessarily a friend . . . I think that socialists Timoshenko and Yushchenko [the Orange revolution politicians elected after mass protests in 2004] squandered Ukrainian prospects for freedom and prosperity and should be blamed for that, but the alternative (Putin-Yanukovich) proved to be way more disgusting.

Youri’s recommended analysis is “Putin’s Libertarians” by Roman Skaskiw. Excerpts:

… I have been horrified by the libertarian coverage of events in Ukraine. Much of it has been such an uncritical parroting of Kremlin propaganda, so devoid of journalistic integrity, and such a betrayal of libertarian principles, that I can’t decide whether the authors, many of whom I’ve long admired, suffer a bias toward contrarian narratives or are on the Kremlin payroll. …

Paul Craig Roberts attempted to de-legitimize Ukraine’s protests by praising the now-deposed Yanukovych regime and turning a blind eye to its barbarity. His praise includes the term “human-rights trained Ukrainian police”, this after the police had begun kidnapping injured protesters from hospitals. One such protester, Yuriy Verbytsky, a seismologist from the Geophysical Institute in Lviv and mountain climber was injured in the protests, hospitalized, kidnapped from the hospital, severely beaten, and left in the woods where he froze to death. “Human-rights-trained” police do not strip and humiliate captured protesters in -10 C degree weather.

The corruption and savagery of Ukraine’s police is neither secret nor new. Last summer, police stepped aside during a violent raid against the business interests of opposition politician. The business manager was later assassinated. This sort of corporate raiding has been fairly common, though most victims quietly give up their businesses without a fight. There was also this story of policemen connected to the Party of Regions raping a young woman and going free until a rioters sacked the police station, it was a tragic repeat of a brutal rape-murder that happened the year before, also by politically connected persons who were also released by Ukraine’s “human rights trained” police.

It’s one thing to oppose intervention. I’ve done so myself. It’s another to mischaracterize the barbarity of the Yanukovych regime in an attempt to discredit the uprising against it.

Daniel McAdams, executive director of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace has made the libertarian circuit — lewrockwell.com, the Tom Woods Show, the Scott Horton Show, and of course, RT. He makes a number of ridiculous claims, including the argument that the Russian military already had free reign in Crimea: “How can you annex and invade a territory in which you are already legally present?”

I really don’t know what to make of this. Can anyone help me? I find it equally unlikely that he is this disconnected from reality or that he is deliberately spreading disinformation. Are there other explanations? …

MORE.