150 years ago, in May 1873, work began on developing the breakthrough design for mass-produced barbed wire, with wide-ranging (pun intended) implications for agriculture, society, and warfare.
Links and notes for ep. 470 (PDF): http://arsenalfordemocracy.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/AFD-Ep-470-Links-and-Notes-Barbed-Wire.pdf
Theme music by Stunt Bird.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
Trying to remember what the deal is with the Bundy clan that has now seized a National Wildlife Refuge building in rural Oregon? We covered it several times on this site and our radio show. Here’s our best of:
Arsenal For Democracy Radio – Background Discussion on Bundy Ranch Standoff:
Part 1 – Move Your Cows, Bundy – AFD 81
– #MoveYourCows, Bundy
– AFD Radio: April 21, 2014
– No shock there: Bundy a raging racist
– Alt-history novelists have got nothing on Cliven Bundy
– Vegas attack was domestic terrorism, tied to Bundy standoff
– AFD Radio: June 9, 2014 – Should right-wing violence in America be considered terrorism? Should terrorism be treated differently from other crimes?
– Op-ed | American Unexceptionalism & The Republic
– Your New Nevada Assembly Speaker…
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
Yesterday’s shooting in a Las Vegas shopping center was an act of domestic terrorism, and the perpetrators were radical anti-government right-wingers with ties to both Neo-Nazism and the nearby Bundy Ranch standoff against the Federal government on public lands in Nevada.
Residents who spoke about the Millers all mentioned the couple’s relationship with Bundy. Oak Tree resident Sue Hale said the two told her they were in Bunkerville during the standoff, which occurred in April after federal authorities began conducting a roundup of Bundy’s cattle. Bundy had defied the government by grazing the cattle on public land without a permit. “Yap, yap, yap. They were always running their mouths,” Hale said.
[…]
After killing the officers, the couple covered the bodies with a cloth displaying the Gadsen, or “Don’t Tread On Me” flag — a Revolutionary War-era symbol that has since been adopted by the tea party. Investigators also found swastikas at the suspects’ apartment.
Their social media posts before the attack indicate that they were so hardcore about the Bundy standoff that the Bundys made them leave for making them look bad. The Bundy family denied any connection.
Arsenal For Democracy Radio – Background Discussion on Bundy Ranch Standoff:
Part 1 – Move Your Cows, Bundy – AFD 81
It’s important to call these acts what they are, to end the false dichotomy of how other terrorist attacks (by non-whites, inside or outside the country) are labeled and handled. Ultimately, however, the best way to respond to terrorism is to treat it, without glory, as criminal activity. In the words of L. Paul Bremer in the Reagan State Department’s official policy on counterterrorism:
Another important measure we have developed in our overall strategy is applying the rule of law to terrorists. Terrorists are criminals. They commit criminal actions like murder, kidnapping, and arson, and countries have laws to punish criminals. So a major element of our strategy has been to delegitimize terrorists, to get society to see them for what they are — criminals — and to use democracy’s most potent tool, the rule of law, against them.
But until then, I don’t want a false double standard where some stuff is called terrorism and some stuff isn’t, depending on the attackers’ skin color or ideologies.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
Cliven Bundy, anti-government rancher and political theorist extraordinaire, has been releasing videos with even more information on his extremely “unique” view of American — and indeed Western — history and the American social contract. Buzzfeed collected some of the “best of” made-up facts from Bundy’s video.
My favorite is:
They [the Pilgrims] had a central government, which was Europe. Was the strongest army in the world. And they ruled with unlimited power. And there was a point that they decided they wasn’t going to live that way any more. And so they had a revolution.
This and others are so amazingly off-base I’m not sure I could have intentionally made up alternative history this great as a joke. (Long-time readers may recall my extensive alt-history-based satire, before this site or SBBS existed.)
To recap: This man — who is trying to argue based on an arcane and incorrect legal theory that the Federal government can’t make him pay to graze cattle on Federally-managed public lands — literally believes the 1620 Pilgrims had a revolution (in 1776? — unclear) and flat-earth-sailed to America, because they needed to escape a totalitarian government that ruled over all of Europe with a massive army. And somehow, despite a total lack of knowledge on the country’s actual history to the point of not knowing facts the rest of us learned in elementary school, he is a “patriot.”
Somewhere in the afterlife, Oliver Cromwell (England’s real-life dictator from 1653-1658, long after the Pilgrims had left and long before King George III reigned) is silently weeping at the thought of how much phenomenal power he would have had in the 17th century Bundiverse.
1651 Frontispiece of Thomas Hobbes’ “Leviathan” on the English Civil War and the proper form of government.
So it turns out that Cliven Bundy is a big old racist who believes Blacks were better off enslaved and use too much government assistance.
So to recap: Bundy asserts that he can use government resources and not pay his share of usage fees for two decades because he has a made-up (and poorly researched) ideology allowing him to reject the existence of that government — but something-something-black-people-using-resources?
Yeah that makes a whole lot of sense. “No one could have predicted” that the aging white man (whose religion rejected Black membership as recently as the 1970s) who is a rallying point for all the white supremacist anti-government militias in the country would be a raging racist against Black Americans.
Good thing all those prominent Republicans in office and in the media rallied to his cause without doing their homework, just in time for him to be revealed as a gigantic bigot who misses slavery. Oh wait, they don’t care, because they also did that after the patriarch of “Duck Dynasty” waxed poetic about the good old days before the Civil Rights Movement.
(For our in-depth analysis of Cliven Bundy’s deeply misguided position on the Federal government, listen to Arsenal For Democracy 81 from earlier this week.)
But the real question is this: is it inherently more objectionable that he’s a vicious racist or that he rejects the existence of the Federal government and has brought in heavily armed supporters to resist the government’s attempts to clear his cattle off public lands for refusing to pay a cumulative one million dollars in back fees over two decades?
Description | Topics: Bundy Ranch standoff, Allen West, HBO’s Veep. People: Bill, Nate, Greg, and guest Daniel Fidler.
– Why Cliven Bundy owes the Federal government a million dollars in back taxes (and why he believes the United States doesn’t have any authority over him)
– What Allen West’s latest anti-Muslim rant tells us about American views on governance and the Framers’ intent
– Political Pop Culture: Why you should be watching HBO’s “Veep,” now in its 3rd season.
Part 1 – Bundy Ranch Standoff:
Part 1 – Move Your Cows, Bundy – AFD 81
Part 2 – Allen West:
Part 2 – Allen West – AFD 81
Part 3 – Daniel Fidler on HBO’s “Veep,” season 3 [Spoiler Alert]:
Part 3 – Veep Review – AFD 81
To get one file for the whole episode, we recommend using one of the subscribe links at the bottom of the post.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
As a preparation for a segment in our upcoming episode of Arsenal For Democracy this week, I’m posting a bit of background information on the case of the Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy who is refusing to pay his grazing fees on Federal land. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) recently started trying to remove his cattle from the Federal ranges, and this brought in the anti-government militia types, resulting in an impasse.
The core of Bundy’s refusal to pay his grazing fees for over twenty years — that’s how patient the BLM has been — is this claim he makes:
“I abide by all of Nevada state laws. But I don’t recognize the United States government as even existing.”
He believes the lands belong to the state of Nevada, rather than the Federal government, because he doesn’t accept the latter’s existence in the first place (as we’ll discuss in much greater detail on the episode coming out this Wednesday), and so he feels he doesn’t need to pay any fees.
That position runs into an immediate problem (beyond all the Federal court rulings against him), pointed out in The Atlantic, which is that it’s impossible to claim to be abiding by Nevada’s laws and constitution, because Nevada’s Civil War-era constitution demands fealty to and cooperation with the Federal government above all else:
the Paramount Allegiance of every citizen is due to the Federal Government in the exercise of all its Constitutional powers as the same have been or may be defined by the Supreme Court of the United States; and no power exists in the people of this or any other State of the Federal Union to dissolve their connection therewith or perform any act tending to impair, subvert, or resist the Supreme Authority of the government of the United States. The Constitution of the United States confers full power on the Federal Government to maintain and Perpetuate its existence, and whensoever any portion of the States, or people thereof attempt to secede from the Federal Union, or forcibly resist the Execution of its laws, the Federal Government may, by warrant of the Constitution, employ armed force in compelling obedience to its Authority.
Woops. Time to move your cows or pay up, Bundy.
For the rest of you more law-abiding citizens, check back on Wednesday night for our radio discussion of this situation, which we just recorded tonight. We take this apart from all angles and look at some of the historical circumstances that brought us to this moment.
Update 4/24/14: Listen to the segment below:
Bundy Ranch Standoff:
Part 1 – Move Your Cows, Bundy – AFD 81
Find the rest of the episode here.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
