Just pay up

It amazes me the lengths people will go to not to have to pay for things. Sure, we all want things for free and we’ll try wacky schemes to avoid opening a checkbook. In Nevada, Cliven Bundy has gone to quite an extreme, using the help of an armed militia to protest having to pay fees for his cattle to graze on federal land. This battle has been going on in court for 20 years and Bundy has lost every battle and has not been able to prove his claim that he has special grazing rights. He has called for county sheriffs to “disarm the federal bureaucrats.”

Dude, just pay the fees, for Christ’s sake. I’ve never seen so many histrionics over one person who is trying to get out of opening his wallet.

To the other ranchers in Nevada who pay their fees to the Bureau of Land Management, it must seem kind of insulting that this one guy feels he can get out of it. "I abide by all of Nevada state laws. But I don’t recognize the United States government as even existing," Bundy said. The existence of a federal government is not a belief; it is factual. Bundy just sounds like one of those drama queens who accepts the parts of the federal government that benefit him, like the Second Amendment, but cries “tyranny!” when the same government actually tries to collect taxes. Drop the highfalutin language and just admit that you’re cheap.

It gets even wackier from there as Bundy checked in from the planet Jupiter with his philosophies on race relations. “Let me tell you about the Negro,” he said. Please, sir! Do enlighten us! With a set-up like that, you just know what follows will be horrifying/hilarious racist gold! Bundy asked whether black people might be better off as slaves. To answer this rhetorical (at least I hope it was rhetorical) question, no. Nobody is better off as a slave because slavery is the bottom of the human condition. Bundy’s question proves what I’ve always believed: There is such a thing as a stupid question.

This same guy who questions whether slavery might not be so terrible has also compared himself to Rosa Parks. Even a casual study of history can spot the difference between the two. Parks stood up to a system that stripped her and a lot of other people of their dignity. Bundy is standing up for his right not to pay the taxes that numerous governmental bodies have said he owes.

What I want to know is: Who are these armed militia people who felt so passionately about this issue that they turned out en masse to protest? Did they hear about this federal stand-off and say, “Hey, some guy won’t pay his taxes! Grab all the guns you can carry! Let’s intimidate the hell out of some bureaucrats at the Bureau of Land Management!” I support the right to protest, of course, but this is what they’re getting passionate about? One person who doesn’t want to pay?

There are legitimate fears of the overreach of the federal government. You know what scares me more? Groups with names like the Oath Keepers, the White Mountain Militia and the Praetorian Guard, which were standing with Bundy. It scares me that we could have another Waco standoff. It scares me that our great savior of federal tyranny is some posse that says the Constitution means whatever they say it means and sticks a gun in the face of anyone who tries to argue otherwise. At least the federal government has an extensive appeal system, which Bundy worked for 20 years. What kind of recourse do you have when you disagree with an armed militia?