Cliven Bundy wonders if blacks were ‘better off as slaves’: Republican supporters start fleeing (via The Moderate Voice)
More responsible Republicans are now starting to flee. Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, the rancher who refused to pay grazing fees, suggested he’d violently resist if the feds showed up to try and coerce him or touch his land or property, made comments…
This post was republished using Repost. Please read it on Informed Comment directly: https://www.juancole.com/2014/04/whether-support-remarks.html
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Related video:
Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks: “Fox’s Hannity Provokes Cliven Bundy Toward Bloody Battle”
Bundy wants to be shown where in the constitution it says that the Federal Government has the right to own and charge grazing fees for federal land. Fine.
Article 4, Section 3, Clause 2 of the United States Constitution states:
The Congress shall have power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States, and nothing in this Constituion shall be so construed as to Prejudice any Claims of the United States, or of any particular state.
This is known as the Federal Property and Territory Clause and gives the United States Congress exclusive authority to set rules and regulations for the management of public lands.
The following laws relate to the Bureau of Land Management’s administration of public lands.
The Taylor Grazing Act of 1934
The Endangered Species Act of 1973
The National Environmental Policy Act of 1976.
The Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976
The Public Rangelands Improvement Act of 1978
All of these laws were established by congress in accordance with the United States Constitution as spelled out above in the Federal Property and Territory Clause in the constitution.
The Taylor Grazing Act was established to prevent overgrazing and soil deterioration on public lands. Since the first grazing district was established in 1935, private ranchers have paid the federal government for the privilege of grazing their livestock on public lands.
Mr Bundy only need read the Constitution of the United States and the Taylor Grazing Act passed by the Congress in 1934 to discover why he is supposed to pay grazing fees. Mr Bundy is in effect stealing from the Federal Government and the people of the United States. He needs to understand that he is violating the law which is established in the United States Constitution.
Mr Bundy does not own the land he is grazing his cattle on. He has no right to do so in violation of the constitution. He should be justly punished for his criminal behavior in violation of the constitution.
With regard to his racism, I hereby condemn his impertinent and ugly views with regard to African Americans. He speaks of people receiving federal assistance, yet has no conception of his hypocritical behavior. He is allowing his cattle to graze on public lands in effect receiving assistance from the government and is in violation of the law.
It is high time the federal government end Mr Bundy’s deadbeat behavior after mooching off public lands for 20 plus years.
Support the man you support his words.
Right wing extremists who love conspiracies say the video is edited. But #maddow put Bundy’s in historical context last night.
States’ Rights = White supremacy.
I’m sure you can find isolated exceptions by a Google marathon, but the great thrust of American history is that the Southern oligarchy did not want democracy to get in their way. For 350 years it has assaulted any signs of unity between poor whites and blacks against the inherent injustice of their concentration of economic power, from Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676 to the Grange movement under Reconstruction to the New Deal coalition. This in turn is part of a global history of the lower classes uniting to erect democratic central governments to battle the injustice of powerful landlords who dominate local government.
That’s just how it usually works with private property. Switzerland is the exception in that its ethnic communities accept power-sharing with each other, thus decentralized militias are not used by one language group to turn the others into sharecroppers. That’s not us, that’s never been us. That’s not our “exceptionalism”. The KKK is our exceptionalism and it fought for the level of government it could dominate.
Which leaves us with a coherent ideology of caste enforced by a body of lower-income whites who prefer to identify with their oligarchic oppressors against the people of color beneath them. This in turn is disguised as “tradition” and “faith” to demand special rights to deny rights to others, putting them inherently at odds with actual democratic practice.
Everything Bundy says is consistent with the far-right mantra “America is a republic, not a democracy,” a slogan that was radically advanced towards the mainstream by Fox and the GOP. The phrase only makes practical sense if it means they intend to turn back the clock, take the right to vote away from those who lacked it under the “original”, “perfect” Constitution. Government-haters of a supposedly left-wing bent don’t want to see this, because they can’t stomach having to fight all those scary rural types instead of their preferred villains. But really, they just want the government to collapse so they don’t have to fight for anything at all, damn the consequences to minorities. No, you idiots can’t get rid of the Empire that way.