Sagebrush Redux

Groundhog Day! The alarm clock rings and we keep waking up to the same wretched farce day after day after year after year after decade after decade ad nauseum. Instead of Reagan and Watt we have Trump and Zinke and Cliven Bundy. Who will no doubt soon have his own line of survival gear and western wear. Grazing rights, States rights, Sagebrush rebellion, blah blah on and on.Cliven is now on the lecture circuit and just gave a talk in Big Sky Country. Our local Patriot Representative Theresa Manzella was there, reassuring the crowd that she was "not a politician, I am one of you." Except of course she holds political office and does politics. Luckily the crowd is not overly burdened with discernment or coherent thinking.

The crux of the matter is private property and the individual vs the collective. The classic Left/ Right antagonism, though rarely articulated, because it is so contentious and divisive. Bundy, who just visited Sanders County Montana, came at the behest of a group calling itself the Coalition of Western Property Owners. Other sponsors are the American Lands Council and Freedom Works and Western Tradition Partnership (there are dozens of these)whose guiding philosophy is: "strongly protected property rights are the key to any free society." It is also the key to capitalism itself.

In Latin America social movements still talk about latifundia, or land reform in terms of redistribution. Every once in a while you might hear about workers occupying a factory and taking over production. In the USA private ownership of productive property is sacred and supported by every class. We can talk about socialized medicine or public utilities, Obama can even take control of a car company for a while, but no one talks about nationalization or collectivization. No one.

Because the individual and their individual rights are the supreme law of the land. Their is no "collective" subject, except when it comes to public land, where "We the People" are owners. Which is why Bundy & Co. have their eye on it. Bundy, not unlike ISIS or the Taliban, sees his mandate coming from God (manifested in the US Constitution) How can he lose?