I keep wondering, what is really the issue here. his right to graze his cattle on public lands or his personal beliefs? I should say, his personal beliefs as reported by a less than trustworthy media.
His personal beliefs don't mean a hill of beans to me. As far as I'm concerned, he could be a NAZI and it would have nothing to do with the
legal aspect of this whole thing.
But his actions do mean something to me. He broke the law and those who are cheering him on are cheering lawlessness. It's really that simple.
That being said, it was Bundy himself who has decided to speak openly about his personal beliefs. No one has made him do it. Now, that's ok, too, he has a right to do that, but then no one should go around bellyaching if the majority of Americans find him, at the end of the day, to be very distasteful because of his views. Then that's his problem, not mine.
I wish I could say that I "feel" for Bundy, but I don't. While his fellow ranchers have been paying those unbelievably modest grazing fees, he has been ******* the system over and I would say that 20 years is more than enough time to have long solved this problem. I wonder how many of those law-abiding ranchers feel, having played the game fair and square, only to see this yahoo soak up all the attention. If anything, the US Government was far too lenient with Bundy and let this slide until it got this ugly, imo.
And in the bigger picture of things, [MENTION=24208]Spoonman[/MENTION], it is entirely possible that on down the road, it could be time to rethink the amount of Government land that is there in a state like Nevada, which used to be unbelievably sparsely populated, but which is growing. As populations grow and resources become more scarce, I can see this as a real issue, but Bundy is the wrong guy to channel this through, really, he is.
It's hard to classify this as government encroachment when that land has been federal property since the founding of the state itself and it's entrance into the Union.