Cliven Bundy, Revealed

Why is it that so many people who claim to be real Americans and true patriots, who clothe themselves in the American flag and spend their every waking moment railing against the injustices of big government, just turn out to be crooks and racists?

I'm talking about Cliven Bundy, the darling of Sean Hannity. In an interview with the New York Times Bundy had the following to say:

“I want to tell you one more thing I know about the Negro,” he said. Mr. Bundy recalled driving past a public-housing project in North Las Vegas, “and in front of that government house the door was usually open and the older people and the kids — and there is always at least a half a dozen people sitting on the porch — they didn’t have nothing to do. They didn’t have nothing for their kids to do. They didn’t have nothing for their young girls to do.

“And because they were basically on government subsidy, so now what do they do?” he asked. “They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton. And 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? They didn’t get no more freedom. They got less freedom.”

If Bundy doesn't believe that the US government doesn't exist, why is he hiding behind the US flag? As Jon Stewart pointed out in last night's episode of The Daily Show, the Founding Fathers would approve of going after Bundy with armed federal agents for non-payment of grazing fees: they sent 13,000 militiamen against farmers who failed to pay excise taxes on whiskey they distilled during the 1791 Whiskey Rebellion.

Bundy doesn't have a leg to stand on. Thousands of ranchers pay fees to graze their cattle on federal land in the West, including Glenn Beck. Even people like Raymond Yowell, a Shoshone Indian, can't skip out on the fees, according to Fox News. If anyone has a legitimate claim to "ancestral grazing rights" it's Yowell, whose ancestors made treaties with the federal government over land use more than a century and a half ago. Where was Bundy when the BLM took Yowell's cattle? And I wonder, in light of what Bundy said about "the Negro," what he would say about Yowell's people?

Cliven Bundy is just a thief and a racist. He's using the guise of patriotism to clothe his greed in the finery of "principle" and his racism with the magic words of "states rights."

I also noticed that Bundy's got a lot of guys just sitting around on his ranch with nothing to do buy play with their guns. Don't they have jobs? Or can they afford to diddle away the days playing rebel because they're on government assistance? Does Bundy, who's 67, draw Social Security checks?

But since they're white, I guess it's all good.