Thuggish government not such a big problem now that Cliven Bundy is a racist

The Cliven Bundy story was convoluted even before we found out the other day that his attitudes on matters of race are, um, interesting. Now that we know his thoughts on "Negros", conservatives are backing away like Bundy is a car about to explode:

"I've often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy?" Cliven said, the New York Times reports. Last week, when discussing the armed standoff between the federal Bureau of Land Management and Bundy and his supporters, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., called Bundy and his armed allies "domestic terrorists." Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., responded, "What Sen. Reid called 'domestic terrorists,' I called 'patriots,'" said Heller. He noted that he's supported efforts to transfer some federal land in Nevada to state control.

---

Heller's office told CBS News that the senator repudiates the rancher's most recent remarks. "Senator Heller completely disagrees with Mr. Bundy's appalling and racist statements, and condemns them in the most strenuous way," a spokesperson for the senator said. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., a potential presidential contender with libertarian views, similarly sympathized with Bundy's opposition to federal authority. He said on Fox News on Monday, "With regard to his specifics, I'm for obeying the law and I'm not for a violent outcome. But with regard to the general question, should the states have some prerogative in this, I think so. I would like to see the land owned by individuals, either privately or, at the very most, the state government, but not the federal government." On Thursday, the senator responded on Twitter to Bundy's recent remarks: "Cliven Bundy's remarks on race are offensive and I wholeheartedly disagree with him," he said.

Rob, MJ and I had a discussion yesterday about how your average conservative site might approach this whole thing. My first question was this: If the BLM was abusing Bundy's rights and conducting itself like jack-booted thugs, why does it matter that Bundy is a racist? The issue isn't his personal virtue but the government's abuse of its power. But that was the problem with the story all around, and it was the reason we never really jumped on it. The only piece we produced was one the boss wrote comparing Bundy's treatment by the BLM to his own experience two decades ago with the IRS, but there the point wasn't that Bundy was necessarily on the side of the angels. Rather, it was that there are better ways for the government to handle the situation than coming over a hill with weapons in hand:

The BLM had decided to be heavy handed and use the Bundys to set an example. But some of their neighbors showed up, and they showed up with guns. The cited the Second Amendment's statement that we need to maintain a well-regulated militia – and these folks were acting as a militia in the defense of their neighbor against government thuggery. Good for them. So now the BLM say it is going to back off and use judicial and administrative procedures. That's what they should have done in the first place! You don't converge on a citizen of the country armed with firepower because of a dispute over a very complicated law. This is the same problem we have with the tax code. The IRS can come at you and demand all kinds of information, and you never know if someone is out of bounds when they're making these demands.

We also republished a piece by our friends over at Rare with some raw video of the situation. The reason we didn't do more, quite honestly, is that we weren't really sure what we thought about the situation. Rob and I discussed it several times and we both had to admit we weren't experts on grazing rights, and it was hard to ignore the fact that Bundy acknowledged the fees he was refusing to pay for reasons we found quite novel to say the least. What we didn't want to do was jump all over the story just because the "conservative movement" had adopted Bundy as its hero of the moment. If he was really being abused by the government, then that was the issue and his own merits were immaterial. By contrast, if the narrative rested on Mr. Bundy being an admirable man, well, the narrative is a lot less attractive today, now isn't it? The left is having a field day today with the Bundy-as-racist storyline, and it just goes to show what a risk political movements take when they are so quick to embrace someone they don't really know, and to go all in on a situation that is complicated to say the least. My own thought remains the same as Herman expressed last week: The BLM should have handled the situation through legal and administrative methods, not by showing up with guns in hand. The despicable Harry Reid, who has been assailing Cliven Bundy throughout this entire story, is now demanding that Republicans denounce him. If that is necessary, it is only because Bundy was personally celebrated in the first place, which now looks like a foolish unforced error since we really didn't know anything about him. I guess the problem here is that "optics matter," but that's the risk you take when you try to use "optics" to craft a narrative that works to your side's advantage. Last week's salt-of-the-earth rancher is this week's ignorant racist. Oops! None of which is to say there is no story here. The federal government should not be using the kinds of tactics that were used against Cliven Bundy, and that has nothing to do with how good or bad a guy he is. It has to do with the type of society we are supposed to be. Even if he is in the wrong legally, which he very well may be, a government that can't solve that problem without showing up guns-a-blazin' needs to be replaced by one that can.