By Courtney Daniels
The media distorts information to the point of social division. This is a photo of myself and the resilient, often charismatic, and maybe not so tactful Cliven Bundy. He’s a cowboy and a helluva family man, not an orator. One thing he definitely isn’t — a racist.
I found his comments to not only be NOT racist, but his own view of his experiences. Who the heck are we to determine another man’s perspective on the world around him?! Just because Picasso’s view of the world was abstract, does it negate the fact that his art was genuine?
Furthermore, if you take the time to do your own research, you’ll find that his statements about some black Americans actually hold weight. He posed a hypothetical question. He said, “I wonder if….” Hell, I’m black and I often wonder about the same about the decline of the black family.
Bottom line is that we are all slaves in this waning republic, no matter our skin color. Mr. Bundy could have used any racial demographic as an example: Native Americans on reservations, whites in trailer parks, etc. He noticed the crippling effects of receiving government “assistance” and the long term result of accepting handouts. It’s not progress at all.
I challenge Sean Hannity, Rand Paul, and others to read my comment and reconsider their position in this matter. Individual liberties are at stake here, yours and mine. THAT is the issue. Don’t let the liberal media and ignoramuses like Glenn Beck and that weasel Harry Reid make you lose sight of the real issue here: The federal government is a burgeoning behemoth and a bully on a once constitutional playground.
I sincerely hope you real patriots out there can see through the smoke.
Semper Fidelis
[ insert pic of token black friend here.jpg]
http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100117130134/southpark/images/d/d3/Token_Black2.png
No, but he does need a public relations guy.
…or a gal. But the best woman in the biz is currently employed by Mike Bloomberg.
She’s the best??? Jeebus, I’d hate to see the worst.
Amen.
Lousy set-up. It was in the punch line. Sorry you missed it.
Imagine how well she would do if her client actually had a product worth selling. She is a good PR person, but the product they’re selling stinks.
“Were all on the reservation now.”…..Russell Means
Thank you, people jumped on Bundy far too quickly. Unless you listen to the whole speech he gives, you can’t understand the scope of what he is trying to say. Unfortunately there are several perfect clips that, when taken out of context, are racist.
Mainstream media and news is directing the flow of information, but we have to take the time to verify how the story is slanted.
This was well said, Robert. I saw a clip of his complete remarks before the media decided to parse it to Bundy’s disadvantage. The day they began to vilify him as a racist, it became almost impossible to find the complete version…he was set up. The media outlets that have gone along with this are despicable.
I think a lot of people hear what confirms their preconceived notions. When they saw Bundy talking about blacks and also used the word slavery, it was done. It did not matter at that point what he actually said.
A lot of folks that already made of their mind that they did not like him for whatever reason and posted comments here very, very obviously did not read even the short version of what he actually said.
It’s very frustrating, but I do think we all do it to some degree.
If taken out of context, how does that make them racist?
“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.”
Any time you get to the point in conversation where you are wondering if some race would better off as a slave, then you are racist. You might have black friends who also misunderstand how evil slavery was, but that does not make you less racist.
If you are just using slavery as a metaphor for how bad government assistance is, then get a new metaphor. Because living on government assistance is a choice, and slavery is not. Period. End of metaphor.
And if you think that inner-city violence is even remotely comparable to the violence inherent in slavery, then you didn’t pay attention during school. Or perhaps you went to a really bad school.
And finally, tell me what you think would happen if those roles were reversed. What if the black guy in the picture were the one grazing his cattle for free on federal land. What if the white guy was the friend that he rolled out to prove he was not racist?
Do you suppose this web site would come out in favor of a black guy who had been breaking the law for 20 years? Do you suppose this web site would support a black guy forming a lawless gang of armed thugs to shoot law enforcement personnel?
If the armed criminals in Chicago changed their name to “militia” instead of “gang”, would this website suddenly start fawning over their property rights?
Yoo-hoo! Nobody shot anybody, you are a bit frantic here.
That’s true, no one has been shot yet. Which is why Bundy and his militia members should not have chosen to point guns at federal officials and escalate the situation.
Now, those militia members could find themselves getting shot or even killed. Such is the consequence of pointing rifles at lawmen trying to do their job.
The reason the militia brought their guns is so they could use deadly force. They did not bring them for a gun show.
You are rather conveniently “forgetting” who is was that pointed guns first, and at unarmed people.
William, I am not forgetting who raised their weapons first. It was Bundy and his family:
http://theweek.com/article/index/259918/the-contentious-policy-at-the-heart-of-cliven-bundys-armed-standoff-with-the-government
But you, sir, are a liar. And I am not accustomed to believing liars.
William,
Name-calling is pretty much what I expect from you. It confirms what I already thought about you.
I am grief-stricken at your accusations, Dave.
Go away, kid, you bother me.
“lawmen trying to do their job. “
I guess I was sick the day at the CJA they taught me part of my job was to point rifles at peaceful, unarmed protesters and arrest people without probably cause.
No wait. I wasn’t. I was there they day they told that was the EXACT OPPOSITE of my job. In fact, had a cop in my state arrested Bundy’s son with “no charge at the time,” that would have been FELONY.
Cops doing their job…really? Just. Wow.
All of this right here.
Dave – I think you are the one that needs to go back to school. Let’s take your stupidity and bias point by point.
1. If you are a slave to a system of governance that puts you in the same position socialogically as you were as a slave to an individual, then you are no less a slave, and no better off. Apparently your ability to look at social concerns does not extend to the existential or thoughtfulness apparent in the plight of a people or race. It isn’t all black and white (no pun intended).
2. Living on assistance is a choice? Apparently you were not brought up in an inner city area in this country, or know anything much about that issue at all. Social systems involving public assistance/welfare become typically self replicating and demeaning to the morale and ambition of recepiants as they become more pervasive as ours have. When people with college degrees cannot find work in this country, how hard do you think it has become for welfare families? Grow up.
3. Inner city violence as bad? You have to be kidding. More people have been killed in the last ten years due to inner city violence in the top 10 US cities than were killed in US cities due to slavery prior to the Civil War. Go look at the figures. It’s called educational research, learn to do it before you open your pie hole.
4. Mr. Bundy’s family opened up the land his ranch is on near the turn of the century, and his cattle were grazing prior to the US government showing up and taking it over by the right of immenent domain. His family homesteaded and blazed a trail in this state when others chose not to live there. He and his family have been helping provide the beef that you eat for several generations. If you had any actual intelligence, or experience you would know how hard a life this is, and the fact that the US government has every year made it harder and harder through over regulation, and the removal of public grazing lands an even harder proposition.
5. The congregation of like minded US CITIZENS in protest of an action by THEIR government, is not an armed “gang”. It is a right guaranteed under the Constitution of the United States of America. Try reading it. Going by your standard, the American Revolution would have never taken place, and we would all still be British citizens.
You appear by your comments Dave to be one of those pseudo-intellectuals who think they know what being a citizen of a democracy is, but in reality have very little knowledge of the actual nuts and bolts or responsibilities of ensuring responsible governance by your own democracy. Get your nose out of the books (and air), and try going to one of these rallys and actually talking to members of the “gang”. You will find that many of them are the kind of people that found this country and are way more responsible in their concern and response to an ever encroaching, and overbearing, and uncaring government entity than you are.
Ghost,
Slavery to a broken value system (such as public assistance) is not the same as slavery. I don’t care how many times you repeat it, it isn’t right. It isn’t even wrong. It is just a bumper-sticker phrase that has lost all meaning because people keep repeating it like it is some kind of mantra.
Just because some guy’s family was using public land for his cattle in the 1920s does not give him ownership of the land. There is a very specific process that governs the rights of ranchers to continue using public lands. And part of that process is you have to pay your grazing fees.
If he had continued to pay his grazing fees, then the government would have never been able to evict him. But since he stopped paying, he loses all claim to the land. Alternately, he could have claimed that the land was his through possession and use. But to do that, he would have to pay taxes, and he hasn’t done that either.
The freedom to assemble and petition the government for redress of grievances is guaranteed by the first amendment. But it is not absolute. The State of Wisconsin recently arrested every single person who showed up at the State Capitol for a protest, because they did not get a permit.
I notice that when a Republican Governor arrests liberal protesters, the first-amendment-quoting freedom lovers on this board are completely silent.
Yet when a bunch of armed terrorists show up and start pointing rifles at Federal Agents, this board suddenly leaps to their defense.
He had a chance to resolve his claims peacefully, and to have his claims and grievances reviewed. He was wrong. His claims were thrown out, and will continue to be thrown out, because he is making stuff up as he goes along. He is a thief and a freeloader, and he has to go back to his grandfather to find someone who wasn’t trying to make a fast buck off the system.
When he called in militia to threaten violence, he crossed the line from “common criminal” to “terrorist”.
At this point, I do not believe the government should bother to negotiate with him any more. You don’t negotiate with terrorists, you round them up, arrest them, and put them on trial.
The fact that he has not been arrested proves that the government is bending over backwards to let him make his case. The government has plenty of ammunition (so to speak) to lock him up and allow him to make his case from jail.
“I notice that when a Republican Governor arrests liberal protesters, the first-amendment-quoting freedom lovers on this board are completely silent.”
Citation please?
Dave, he is an old man and a rancher. Do you really expect him to speak as eloquently as some other people? I know that may be a prejudicial remark but we are talking about someone who grew up and has lived through different times than ourselves.
I agree that HOW he said things was absolutely bad. I understand why people are upset BUT if you let those words have power over your emotions, anyone can control you through emotional manipulation.
So yes. It could have been said MUCH better. But he doesn’t have speech writer & PR people. So…
you are correct Courtney. but the damage has been done weather Mr Bundy is a racist or not was never the point he violated the golden rule of the media, don’t be white and talk about ANY issues facing black people. The Opie and Anthony show have explored this PC insanity alot. the truth is never important to the media only that a white person DARED criticize something about race in this country and must be crucified and branded with the scarlet R
BINGO !
The left (and that is who is behind this) has honed personality destruction to a fine art. I can think of half dozen folks totally demonized in last few years. It is all about control and power.
It’s ALWAYS about money and power. Follow the money.
We president now?
He should not have gone there in his remarks. No matter what he actually said, once you start talking about Blacks the media is going to spin it away.
Bundy made a classic mistake anyway. He should have focused on that conflict and why government overreach was bad for him, his family, and his industry. He tried to broaden the discussion when that part of the discussion wasn’t even relevant. It would have been smarter to keep a laser-like focus on the specific overreach that he was involved in. It would be good to win a battle or two in the war.
Easy to say (or do) that if you have PR or public speaking experience. This man is a cattle rancher with no aspirations of public life. Like many from the sam wy of life he just speaks his mind and calls it like he sees it. This country is too concerned with appearances and not enough with substance, and this needs to change.
It all starts at home, then the schools…
Well, anyone who saw what he said about Hispanics (that they do a great job or raising their families and that they have a helluva work ethic) should recognize that he’s not actually racist. On an unrelated note, why do you have your dump pouch in front of you, rather than on your side or behind you? It’s gonna bounce against your leg if you end up having to run with an empty mag or two in there.
I, myself, have been wondering about hitting the dirt with your mag pouches in front of your gut. It’s even worse on those of us with extra gut.
Man I thought the same thing at the start of the article haha, the rarely seen front dump pouch. To each his own I suppose.
While it’s not as negative, saying that “Hispanics have a great work ethic and raise their families well” is just as racist and prejudiced as saying that Asians can’t drive, Jews are stingy, Blacks are lazy, or Whites are arrogant.
Agreed. Just because it sounds all warm and fuzzy does not mean it is not racist. “Black people have darker skin than Caucasians”. That is not racist, it is definition. Most any other statement that begins by defining a racial segment of society is going to have a hard time avoiding racism. “White folk are wonderful!” Racist. “Black people love their families.” Racist. Every race has every definition of people in it. Tall, short, fat, skinny, good, bad, or indifferent, race does not matter. Blacks have darker skin than whites. That is every generalization you can make about those two races without unfounded racist assumptions.
He’s all about illegal immigration, because he gets to exploit them (work “side by side”) for cheap undocumented labor on his melon farm.
And I can’t believe he’s getting such a free pass from the right for *that*.
Thank you Courtney. You are not the dumb.
Well, it is the angle of the light that makes that Mexican fellow look black, either that or he is photoshopped. /sarc
I don’t really have anything against or for Bundy, all I know is that it isn’t my fight and that he lost some court case. I don’t really want to be involved.
I do find it dishonest how the media tries to portray him as some old school redneck/KKK member. I don’t completely agree with what he says though. One should be able to get help from the government if one is down on their luck or has had a string of bad events. You pay taxes after all, isn’t it better that they are spent on you instead of bombing people thousands of miles away? I do get that people who live off this system do cause a problem. I can’t really comment more since I have more experience and knowledge of the Norwegian system than the American one. Here in Norway maybe 5-15 % abuse this system while the rest use it to get back into work as soon as possible.
Incidentally, I disagree with you on one point: one should not be obligated to pay taxes with the expectation of help, “just in case you’re down on your luck”. Tax me less and I put more away for a rainy day, and I can afford to help my friends and family more when they’re down on their luck. Wellfare is just used as an excuse for taxation, but it’s not a particularly good or efficient justification.
“Tax me less and I put more away for a rainy day”
There’s that pesky personal responsibility again.
So many of these discussions seem to come back to statism vs individualism. And what Bundy said brought some of this discussion back to the forefront where it needs to be.
Difference between putting away for a rainy day and getting your career ruined because of an extended stay in the hospital, seen it happen, not pretty.
Besides, you got to be a bit ignorant if you think that everybody who applies for welfare is a money grubbing lazy person who doesn’t want to work. Those are in the minority.
The problem with the “put away money for a rainy day” is that it implies that you have a job which allows you to do that, not everyone has. Just look at everyone who works minimum wage.
Oh, come on. You seem to have completely missed the point.
lolinsky, I’m not seeing a reference for that assertion. I think there is HUGE abuse in the welfare system, and even where it is not being abused it is counterproductive. When I was a kid, if someone fell on hard times, his neighbors and friends took care of him and his family while they got back on their feet. Unless, of course, their main family business was robbing, stealing, and dealing drugs. Then, you could just die. Now, there is no supervision at all. Just look up uncle sugar and rock on! And there is no community involvement, just let the gubt take care of it. That came to be while I was in college, and I said at the time it would have just those drawbacks. It doesn’t take rocket science…
Historically (1860s thru today) the party of the KKK is the democrat party.
Historically, the party of the KKK has been Republican ever since Democrats’ push for civil rights in 60s caused the southern Democrats / Dixiecrats to split away and then join Republicans, followed by Republicans pursuing the “Southern Strategy”. Here’s what Lee Atwater, Reagan’s campaign strategist, had to say about it when explaining why people who used to vote for Wallace will now mostly vote for Reagan (as they did):
“You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger” — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I’m not saying that. But I’m saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”
Kind of like everyone now saying “Socialist” and “community organizer”.
Nice to have somebody else point out that the Southern Strategy was (and largely still is) a real thing.
To be fair, the outright racism of the KKK generally doesn’t fly in the Republicans anymore either. But it does have an unfortunate fringe of segregationists.
It is not the job of the government to “take care of you if you are down on your luck”. That is a gross contortion of the general welfare clause. We have charitable organizations that exist for those purposes. The government likes to fancy the welfare program as charitable, but one cannot call the extortion of money from taxpayers a form of charity. If it were charity, all contributions would be voluntary.
AB-SO-ROOTRY!!
I don’t know what it’s like where you are but I’ll go there. . . in the US the majority of public assistance recipients are milking the system by degrees. I spend my days walking past help wanted signs on the way to enroll able bodied people into public assistance programs. I see some people, damaged people, toiling away to make crumbs while perfectly healthy people suck up government support. It’s epidemic here and there is virtually no shame in taking to the dole. We’re losing our economy and culture to the concept that if you’re not successful you’re a victim and entitled to public support. It can’t be even one more generation before we’ve reached critical mass and can’t afford it anymore.
Oh, sure we can. I know! Why don’t we “ask” the rich to pay “their fair share”? Wonder why nobody thought of that before?
Also, we could just raise the minimum wage. The reason people prefer public assistance is because $7.25 an hour is not enough to lift anyone out of poverty.
If we adjust the minimum wage for inflation, it would be $10.55 per hour. At the higher rate, people might start taking all those jobs Ardent is talking about.
True what Dave says, if the minimum wage hasn’t been adjusted for inflation then it is no wonder people don’t work. My brother saw it, called it “modern slavery”. Can’t help but agree, if you earn just enough to keep yourself alive without possibility of moving forward then I wouldn’t call that a life.
Again, as I said earlier. I can’t comment too much about this since American and Norwegian systems are different.
To Dave and lolinski,
We all seem to forget that the ‘minimum wage’ is not meant to live on, but is a wage to start off on. If the minimum wage is raised, that means the companies paying that will need to offset it by charging more someplace else, perpetuating the cycle. Look at McDonald’s: raise the wage to $12 and hour, and your Big Mac will move from being $3.50 to $3.70 so that they can pay the higher wage to the employee. No one else will be getting a raise (Blue/White Collar), and they will need to increase their income to keep up the style of life they like. Thus they will raise the rent on the homes they may have bought for investment, causing the increased wages to go to paying more for the same, just perpetuating the cycle. Is that worth it? Then the government will come in and set regulations on how much housing can cost, to keep the minimum wagers under roofs, and then it just progresses.
Is that what we want?
Shawn,
The minimum wage was not intended to be a “training wage”. Even in the 1950’s, many employees started out at minimum and stayed there. Today, the percent who stay there is greater than ever.
In the 1950’s though, you could feed a family of three on minimum wage. The minimum wage was designed to protect the dignity of work, and to keep business owners from taking advantage of their lowest-paid employees.
Today, the minimum wage barely feeds one person, much less a family.
The idea that raising the minimum wage will cause prices to rise has been disproven over and over again. The average CEO these days makes about 300 times what the average worker makes. (For fast food companies, it is over 1000 time the average worker salary.) In the 1950’s, that number was about 20 times.
If we raise minimum wage, most companies will simply take it out of executive salaries, or out of profits. Considering that corporate profits are at an all-time high, there is plenty of room to raise the standard of living of people at the bottom.
Considering that the minimum wage is the easiest and cheapest way to get people off food stamps, it is absurd to see so many right-wing organizations fighting against it.
Back when George Bush raised the minimum wage, the right wing let it go without argument. They knew it would create jobs, so they passed it quietly without discussion. Now that Obama is trying to do the same thing, the ultra-rich are hopping mad.
I don’t think they want poor people to fail. I just think they don’t understand economics.
You don’t get it, the minimum wage as is doesn’t allow any way to progress. You are essentially stuck there.
Or we could stop inflating away the value of the dollar so that less money had more buying power rather than always asking for government to step in and force others to comply with their diktats which are issued in response to problems which they created in the first place.
I vote we do what Larry suggests first. Then we can talk. The plutocracy must not be allowed to write their own exclusion clauses.
How’s about that? What say ye?
Based on some of these conversations, I suspect that Redleg and I agree on a lot of things. It doesn’t make for an interesting discussion, though, so we talk when we disagree.
For better or worse, I don’t see any way that the government can get out of the current fiscal situation without using inflation to lower the value of the dollar. For Medicare alone, the unfunded liability is trillions of dollars.
Theoretically, the government could raise taxes, and stop spending so much money on military and secret spying programs. Hahahahahha.
Actually William I’d prefer they eliminate the income tax all together. the founding fathers knew that to tax the fruits of a man’s labor was nothing more than another form of slavery, it enslaved the man to government, otherwise it would have been included as an accepted form of taxation in the Constitution.
We did fine without the income tax for 130+ years (longer if you go back to the start of the Revolution). Let’s free all Americans again like they were at the founding of our Republic and shrink the government accordingly. Short of that I’d prefer to see a flat tax that everyone pays so that everyone has skin in the game and rather than voting to tax other people more they’d be voting to increase their own taxes as well and then maybe they’d think twice about it.
A flat tax is not without its own set of inequities. I agree with everything else you wrote.
Since not a penny of income taxes actually go towards the actually budget.
“Since not a penny of income taxes actually go towards the actually budget.”
Be honest with me – grammatical catastrophes aside, does what you’ve written here actually make sense in your head? I don’t know if you actually read this somewhere and are foolish enough to believe it or if the notion just kind of popped into your head and became a ‘fact’ there.
Sorry. I meant to say “…towards the National Debt”, and in fact, a Federal Income Tax is not necessary:
http://www.devvy.com/notax.html
All of her data comes for a 30 year old report. Even if it’s accurate (and I doubt it is, those numbers sound wildly off base) it has no bearing in present day.
Unfortunately, the system here is set up in such a way as to actively discourage and impede anyone going back to work once they are in it. The people running it have a vested interest in keeping as many people on assistance as possible
At the risk of condemnation, I didn’t find fault with anything that Cliven Bundy said. Yes, I am Black and if I just take a 360 degree spin, where I live, I will see examples of it everywhere. I am not unique. He was not wrong at all.
Um, yes, he was wrong. 100% in fact. At least in regards to slavery. Slave families were regularly broken up for various reasons, not the least of which was to try and keep them in line and their spirits broken, so the idea that slavery was something an “OK” thing for them, where they had “chickens” and a “good family life” is completely idiotic.
So even if he isn’t racist, he’s still a completely idiot for even contemplating that slavery was in any way, shape or form an improvement over the current situation.
And to be frank, I don’t give two shits if you’re a black person or not, because that doesn’t spare you from being ignorant of your own nations history. Ignorance of history has become a very serious problem in the conservative movement, and it’s doing loads of damage to the country.
The point is, how nice is the approved black family now? Is it any less enslaved, any more free, any more capable, than it would have been 175 years ago, or does it just answer to a different Massa! Some like to rave on the subject of back then, why don’t you examine now? Are you afraid of the answer? Blacks are largely relegated to shiftless, irresponsible labor, hiding any earnings to avoid interference with the welfare check, denied advancement or training, and hiding in the shadows. They have no families, men just pass through impregnating a few ladies now and then, otherwise the check becomes endangered.
Remember, if you tax it, it will decrease, if you subsidize it, it will increase. Not rocket science, but deliberate undermining of the black race. By Democrats, for the most part, but not exclusively. So, how ’bout you go ahead and explain to me the “history” you are such an expert on, and exactly why a black family (if you can find one) is better served by today’s government than hundreds of years ago.
To me, the foolishness of the statement comes from Bundy’s implying that the situation is somehow unique to blacks and universal to them all. I know there are parts of my town that have blacks that perfectly fit his description. I also know there are parts of my town that have whites fitting the same description. Then there are other parts of town where pretty much everybody — black, white, or blue — puts on business casual and works in an office eight hours a day.
As others have said, I don’t think he meant what he said as an insult or a slight against any race, but to say that those on welfare are representative of all blacks in America is as silly as claiming that multi-millionaires running technology empires are representative of all whites in America.
Look! An armed Negro. Too bad those happy, cotton-picking, vegetable garden growing and chicken raising Negroes who were slaves were not allowed to have firearms.
But they knew how to pick cotton so it’s all good.
Well now, that’s an uncharacteristically cheap shot. Surely you can do better than this. Or is it just too hard to bail out your sinking boat with a spoon?
That’s a good point, American slavery never could have happened if its victims had been armed.
This is a point I often think about, however, depending on what part of the world they came from before coming to the US (caribbean etc), they could possibly have had some kind of weapons when they were just tribesmen before their neighboring warring tribes captured them etc.
A big part of the issue about slaves being declared free men and US citizens is that they would then be entitled to the RKBA.
Yeah, and a big part of your answer, which I think you dodged, is that the slaves who were transported to America were sold into slavery by other black men. And in Africa, IINM, slavery STILL exists. Still wrong, the white man should have known better, it’s all his fault, but the black man sold the black man into slavery.
Even though the victims and the criminals are sometimes the same color, the crime is still just as bad.
In fact, the crime is still just as racist. It was, after all, a crime against certain races. Whenever someone points out co-conspirators of various races, I always wonder what point they are trying to make.
Dave, the point they are trying to make is this:
Slavery has been practiced by all races/cultures/ethnicities since the dawn of man and is still practiced even today. In fact there are more human beings enslaved today than during the time of the American Civil War but you NEVER hear anyone castigating past (OR PRESENT) examples of slavery except for only that form of slavery which was practiced by white Americans.
Many of us are well past getting our fill of being denigrated for the institution of slavery in America which was practiced by a miniscule segment of the American population. A segment that hardly any of us have any genealogical relation to and even if we did we are not guilty of the sins of our fathers and frankly it is the epitome of being un-American to blame someone for the past mistakes of others. That completely flies in the face of individual liberty and judging people on the merits of their own life rather than on the color of their skin, their family name or who they are related/descended from, their ethnicity, etc..
My grandfather came here from Greece in 1913 and while the other side of my family has been here since 1703 I’ve seen the census records and none of them owned slaves. Frankly I say “eat a bag of d*cks” to anyone who says that I bear any responsibility for slavery in America because of the color of my skin and if you can’t see that then you and I are enemies as you are no different than anyone else who is attempting to subjugate others, you’re just using a different tool to do so.
😀 re: the “eat a bag of” comment. I promise that none of my forebears owned any slaves. Nor can I fix anything that happened before I was born. I was part of the Civil Rights Movement, as a teenager. I gots zip to do with any slavery.
But the reparations movement still moves forward. If there is ANYTHING that can start a new race war, reparations is that something. Which may be the object, after all.
I will have NO PART of any race war. Period. But if attacked, I will defend myself and my family, which is my right and obligation.
Redleg,
I am not one of those people who blames white people for slavery. Neither am I one of those people who says “they were better off as slaves”. Even if someone dresses the statement up by saying: “I was just wondering”, it is still despicable.
As you say, there are still millions of slaves in the world, of many different races. Do you think anyone in the news media would openly wonder: “maybe they are better off?” What if it was your daughter? Would you tolerate anyone saying: “At least she got to see India”?
I also do not believe that the current generation owes anything to any particular race because of their ancestry. But we owe basic human rights to every race: Life, liberty, and equal treatment before the law.
Cliven Bundy has received fair treatment from the government. They gave him dozens of opportunities and 20 years. Instead of making things right, he continues to insist that the gub’ment is out to get him, for no reason at all.
Then, when someone asks why the government is picking on him, and not the thousands of other ranchers grazing on federal land, he comes up with a racist rant about how the government is worse than slave-owners. Well, no, they aren’t.
The government has it’s problems, but public assistance being worse than enslavement is not one of them.
I want to encourage you to keep on doing what you’re doing. Those who are on the fence can look to your repetitive race-baiting, and you are helping them make the right decision.
Slaves had the right to bear arms in Texas. Texas Supreme Court Decision, 1859.
I have a black friend/person in photo! I can’t be racist!
Do you have a person of the race against which you are allegedly racists, who personally knows you, stepping up to write a testimonial about how you are not racist? ’cause then there might be a parallel to this story.
trolling again
More like, I have a black friend who is personally vouching for me, in a very public way, but whatever.
A black friend with a strong political agenda. Hardly a unbiased opinion.
Yes, absolutely another example of propaganda from a sympathetic media in the Democrats pockets; a clear effort by them to portray Bundy as racist with their misleading partial video of Bundy’s statement. Alarmists and accusers at every opportunity, a little tweak here and a little tweak there to advance their narrative.
I observed the same bias at play with national media feed footage of the NRA convention; a limited 20 second video of guns and people holding guns at the NRA Convention, then almost 2-1/2 minutes of detailed video and remarks and speeches from the MDA and Everytown protesters. Totally out of scale with the actual event, and conspicuously revealing the flagrant anti-gun bias of the broadcast media.
If only those viewers other than the armed intelligencia could be observant enough to see through the bias.
I wish there was a more accurate term than “flagrant” to describe the depth of opportunistic race-baiting we have seen in the Bundy affair.
I think there is secret shit going on here!
As I watch the news destroy Clivin Bundy, I have come to realize this is not about racism, but honesty or dishonesty. Racism at it roots is just plain dishonesty. You use your power to dishonestly label another person.
What we have all misses is how dishonest our culture is. You can start with the hatchet job the news is doing on Clivin Bundy’s statements. Any professional journalist has to object to that on professional grounds, but we no longer have professional journalist.
If you take the content of what Cliven Bundy stated and do not understand this statement from an honest man.
” and so what I’ve testified to you — I was in the Watts riot, I seen the beginning fire and I seen that last fire. What I seen is civil disturbance. People are not happy, people are thinking they don’t have their freedoms, they didn’t have these things, and they didn’t have them.
We’ve progressed quite a bit from that day until now, and we sure don’t want to go back. We sure don’t want the colored people to go back to that point. We sure don’t want these Mexican people to go back to that point. And we can make a difference right now by taking care of some of these bureaucracies, and do it in a peaceful way. (Clivin Bundy)”
Then you will never understand the rest of his statement.
Around 1963 I started making trips to the projects to visit some friends. I never could spend the night, as it was too dangerous. The bullet holes in the wall impressed me and the 38 they slept with was also impressive to a 10 year old. This was a rock solid family stuck in the projects. I do not remember their story, but they were in a tough spot.
If you were a single mother, trying to raise a couple of children in than environment, I would be willing to bet they would be praying to god, that people considered their plight to that of the slaves.
http://www.timesdispatch.com/news/state-regional/virginia-politics/jackson-says-welfare-not-slavery-destroys-black-families/article_bb7ca1e9-8f2c-581b-bd0c-94e51c301277.html
I remember the news stories about how great a service we were doing for the poor by building the projects. They never plumbed the hot water and only two of the six or so outlets got connected. You had to unplug the TV to make coffee. The contractors who build the projects got rich and we wrote great stories about it.
Today we do the same; we lower the entrance requirements for minorities but only graduate 40% instead of the 55% average. We charge them and make money off of them, and we tell ourselves how good of job we are doing.
The people of this dishonest culture will never understand honest people. They are so lost in their understanding’s, they have code words they use to label people with. I have no clue what the list is, but picking cotton is one.
If you do an honest job, you understand that picking cotton, growing turnips, raising cattle is honest work. Someone else just pointed out there was no racism in his world, as he also picked cotton. This is the gap between honest people and dishonest people. If you pick cotton, work cattle, grow turnips, raise chickens as an honest person; you understand the value of an honest job. If you are lowering the entrance requirements for a group of people and not graduating them at your normal rate, you are dishonest. If you watch a professional do a hatchet job on a person and say nothing or very little you are dishonest.
When you have a group of dishonest people like the KKK, they control your ethics. If you step out of bounds, they let you know. This is the issue with today’s news media, as they are basically dishonest. They labeled a man as a racist, because he understood the honest job farming is. Clivin Bundy understood that slave or no slave, farming is an honest job. You cannot cheat nature. He has to work under a dishonest BLM, my friends had to live in projects from a dishonest government, and follow the Jim Crow laws that the federal government supported. The whole civil rights movement was about honest people fighting a dishonest government and the culture it supports.
Good points.
My dad was born in 1918, grew up on a farm, dropped out school when he was 16 after his father was killed in an accident. Picked cotton on their place and for neighbors, rode the rails up north to work in factories to support his mother and five brothers & sisters. Most honest, hard working, rightous man I’ve ever known. His whole life he referred to Blacks as “colored”. Raised us to judge by charcter, not by race.
Grew up in the Depression, fought in WWII, retired from Air Force, Bought a spread outside small Central Texas town, was elected County Court judge. Always treated everyone with respect, but always referred to Blacks as colored til the day he died, so in today’s society he would be considered a racist. In my world he was a hero. You need to judge these old guys by the totally of their life, Not by out of favor non-pc words.
“Individual liberties are at stake here, yours and mine. THAT is the issue.”
I like this.
+100
Racist, Not Racist… IDGAF either way. Bundy has about as much to do with me as Koresh did.
I kind of agree.
And even if Bundy is not racist, he is a terrible speaker, doesn’t seem to be very smart, and needs to get off the cameras.
He has a RIGHT TO AIR any and all views he wants.. that is 1A, and let us not forget 4A…The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects (land or what ever)… This is about TRUE LIBERTY , you have it ALL or you are a SLAVE………..NO GRAY area……….these people have been using the race and hate card nonstop….to what end ? To enslave us ALL…(the media, the education systems etc.)
Is your shift button on your keyboard broken?
we sure have lot of government change agents here today… they need to move to ENGLAND and join the slaves.
huh?
I was not aware that using proper grammar and writing like I have some schooling was a hallmark of Commie pinko-dom.
Thank you for your support.
(Signed) The Black People of America
I’ll say it again. He showed his ignorance about black folk from one encounter years ago. He should have kept his damn mouth shut about that and stayed with his own problems with Uncle Sam.
They make it seem like the KKK rode to the defense of an embattled plantation owner. A lot of younger people don’t remember Waco or Ruby Ridge, but there is a certain formula to that type of event that was playing out again in front of our very eyes. For weeks, the media demonized the branch davidians until most people were actually rooting for the government to go in and start shooting. A very real morbid anticipation set in with the public, very much like the OJ trial, and when the tragedy finally started most people were more than willing to believe the story that the children were executed and the fire was started intentionally from the inside. With Bundy, I think a lot of people saw eerie similarities in the two events and were not willing to simply watch them unfold helplessly on television again. Regardless of who the person was being targeted, the people were justified to respond passionately to the potentiality of another such event.
I honestly believe people called Bundy a racist because he didn’t say “African American”, I may not be on his side, but after researching the video of the interview that was posted here I don’t believe he meant to be racist with his comments.
Yep, the media is doing a…
This just in: MH370 is lost again! Search area is narrowed to the Indian Ocean! Film at 11!
SQUIRREL!
I’ve already heard several anchors confuse Cliven Bundy for Donald Sterling .
I don’t think Mr. Bundy is losing any sleep over this. I don’t care if he is racist. The issue is the BLM driving ranchers off public land AND its militarized response to his resistance to submit to its threats. To somehow change your stand because of Bundys perceived character defects shows you weren’t standing for the right thing in the first place.
If it’s public land, can I take my herd of cattle to someone else’s grazing lease and share the lease with them? Can I hike, camp, hunt, or fish on someone’s grazing lease? If I can’t do these things, what makes the land public?
You can hike, camp, and fish on someones grazing lease. That is why the arrangement was called “multiple use”. It is the deep green enviros who have been pushing to drive the ranchers off the land, even if, as with the Bundys, they have property rights to water and grazing.
Dean,
He has no water rights nor grazing rights. If he had wanted to maintain his grazing rights, he would have had to pay for them, which he did not.
Instead, the county paid the appropriate fees to allow the wildlife to graze there. All he is doing is trespassing.
My main beef with the Bundy bandwagon the whole time has been that he did not have any individual liberties at stake (steak?). What he had at stake was the loss of a business that existed because of its dependence on resources (a government grazing lease) that did not belong to Bundy individually. You can argue all you want about the wisdom and fairness of BLM policy, but it doesn’t turn lease-dependent cattle ranching into an individual liberty.
On an unrelated point, pretty much everybody understands that government assistance can harm a work ethic, destabilize families, etc. If you think you’ve stumbled onto some great insight by figuring this out, you haven’t. However, anyone who thinks government assistance is akin to slavery is deluded, no matter what color his skin is.
“You can argue all you want about the wisdom and fairness of BLM policy, but it doesn’t turn lease-dependent cattle ranching into an individual liberty”
+1, +1, +1
He owns the water rights and the grazing rights. That is the primary dispute. There has been at least one federal court decision that recognizes these property rights.
The problem is that it came after Bundy thought the State of Nevada would pick up his fight against the feds in the courts. Surprise! They did not.
Dean,
I think you may be misinformed. He does not own any water rights or grazing rights.
Court records show Cliven Bundy’s parents moved to Clark County and bought the 160 acre ranch in 1948.
Water rights were transferred only for the ranch, not the federally managed land surrounding it. Court records show Bundy family cattle didn’t start grazing on that land until 1954.
Well. That settles it, then. He’s a scoundrel and a villain, who must forfeit all his rights, and submit to the government’s will!
Aside from you being wrong about this, you’re wrong about everything else. I couldn’t expect you to know anything about water and grazing rights, because you won’t take the trouble to inform yourself.
Obviously, the BLM has something more important in store for the grazing land. Maybe they’re going to put a new NSA Data Center on it.
William,
Just because you say something doesn’t make it true. The law behind water rights and grazing rights is well understood. Bundy had his day in court, and he tried every argument available. He lost.
And he didn’t lose because the judges were jackbooted dictators, he lost because he was wrong.
Plenty of ranchers have gone to the same court, and won claims against the BLM for grazing rights. Even Raymond Yowell has won the occasional court victory.
There are plenty of ranchers all through the west that are paying their grazing fees and managing their business profitably. If the government backs off Bundy, then they are basically giving him a subsidy that no other rancher enjoys.
A handout, if you will.
“The law behind water rights and grazing rights is well understood.”
The BLM writes its own laws, answerable to no one. They are judge, jury and executioner. What they say is law, is law. Woe upon the Lost Republic, and it’s toadies, such as yourself.
Your words are the words of tyrants and thieves. And I am entitled to call you a liar and a scoundrel.
William,
It is not my fault that you don’t understand something. If it bothers you that much, go see a psychiatrist.
I generally agree with your first paragraph. However, any movement begins with the outliers. I imagine that the first to suggest violent opposition to our previous government were (both in label, and in fact) nutbags, crackpots, etc. It could be that we are seeing the far right outliers of a bell curve.
People wearing “Google Glass” are seen as over-the-top techies. They probably are, but they might also be the outliers; those quick to pick up on a new direction which we in the middle might some day follow.
Actually, they are roving spy cams who, instead of getting paid for their work, actually PAY to be roving, government spy cams.
Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. During the course of events, multiple individual rights were suppressed, strained, or infringed upon.
The right to own is the most basic of all liberty…if you can not own your land you are a slave.. We all would be SLAVES…It says (D.O.I.) they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty ,and the pursuit of Happiness…(OWN a firearm, own land, own a house, own a car, etc. )
Nobody messed with the 160 acres Bundy actually owned. He did not own the land at issue. Also, the government is perfectly free to take your land for a public purpose as long as they pay you. That’s in the 5A. Land ownership is one of the more alienable rights. Businesses’ fortunes rise and fall due to changes in laws and regulations all the time. Bundy faced this business risk just like anybody else.
It doesn’t matter if he’s the biggest racist since Exalted Cyclops Robert Byrd (D-WV). It doesn’t even matter (much) that he’s legally wrong in this case. What matters is that the Bureau of Land Management deployed snipers, armored vehicles, and storm troopers to confiscate cows. I’m tired of the militarization of cops and bureaucrats. I’m tired of every three letter agency in DC to include the Department of Education having SWAT teams and using them. This has to stop or people are going to die.
According to TTAG, Bundy explicitly threatened a “range war” on April 7, and “snipers” showed up on April 8. Don’t threaten a range war and then get all put out when the other side shows up ready. While I think the BLM should have just liened Bundy’s ranch and saved the tax payers a lot of money, I also think Bundy kindled and fanned the flames of his own fire. Bundy suckered a bunch of people for his own gain, and gun rights are the worse for it.
This is what a lot of people miss in their complaints about government overreach. When you threaten violence against members of the government carrying out a lawful court order (particular when that court order gave Bundy 45 days to obey the law and he still had not 270 days later), do not whine when the government shows up equipped as though somebody had threatened violence against them.
“What matters is that the Bureau of Land Management deployed snipers, armored vehicles, and storm troopers to confiscate cows, and kill some of them.”
Fixed it for ya. But I guess that was the “right” thing to do. Some of them were trespassing.
Still don’t understand why everyone wanted to make Bundy some sort of gun hero… Should have focused on the law enforcement overreaction instead of Bundy’s cause. Do we really need or want snipers enforcing a civil judgment? It was a mistake to hitch Bundy to the 2A wagon…
“It was a mistake to hitch Bundy to the 2A wagon”
THIS x 100
Tell us more about how/where you plan this.
> Do we really need or want snipers enforcing a civil judgment?
The snipers were there to protect the government employees and contractors lawfully enforcing the civil judgment after Bundy threatened a range war. No threats of a range war, no sharpshooters.
And as to the content of this post… I thought we all valued freedom above all else. To suggest that someone is better off as a slave is sorry – and it doesn’t matter what color the person who says that is. To suggest or even wonder if being treated as property and not being able to decide even the most basic of personal and civic questions, could somehow be preferable to today is absurd.
“To suggest that someone is better off as a slave is sorry”
If only someone actually said that, you would have a point.
” To suggest that someone is better off as a slave is sorry – and it doesn’t matter what color the person who says that is.”
It most certainly DOES. If Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton had said it, the news media would have nodded in assent.
What he said was ignorant and myopic. But ignorance and myopia are not crimes, or even sins. We are all guilty of that. Certainly I am. I listened to the entire thing and it was a bit cringe-inducing, since I understand a lot of the horrors of slavery. But it was definitely not said with any sort of malicious intent. I don’t consider him a racist. Unfortunately, for some people, simple ignorance, an attribute possessed by all mankind, becomes a vice if they wish to oppose you. And the talking heads are cowards. Some people really are unsavory types who are difficult to defend, even when they are in the right. I do not find Cliven Bundy to be at all unsavory. He knows his world, which did not include many blacks. No one should hold that against him. Indeed, his recognition of the difficulties and damage done to blacks by the welfare state, despite not having a level of personal experience that those of us who encounter it every day is to his credit.
But some of these white folks imagine themselves to be better judges than you are. And they’ve appointed themselves to speak on your behalf. Why are you so ungrateful?
I’m reminded a bit of a fellow back home in Asheville NC, who used to walk around in full Confederate army regalia. Far from having anything to do with race it was his statement on states rights. Good guy, if slightly strange.
But interacting with him helped teach me a pretty solid lesson. That being there’s racism and there’s people using the issue or race as a bludgeon to push their goals. And it looks pretty seriously like that’s what’s going on here.
If you say so, Dan. But he sure had me fooled!
Thank you Dan Zimmerman. Great article. As soon as I saw the media painting Bundy as a racist I knew there was more to the story. That’s what Liberals do when they don’t win. When you beat them, they break down in frustration and anger and say “WELL, YOUR JUST RACIST! AND SEXIST! AND WANT TO PUSH YOUR RELIGION ON EVERYONE RRRAAWWWWRRRRR!!!!!!!!”
I’ve heard this many times after beating liberals in conversations where the topic has absolutely nothing to do with race or sex, and I’m not even Christian. But they automatically stereotype you, and just lose it when you beat them with pure logic. They just cant handle it and then they explode. In the back of their heads that’s how it just works, anyone that’s not a flag waving fall in line democrat is a Klan hood wearing, blood and oil drinking, inquisition performer.
Exactly. Been there, too.
Thanks for the report, and did not the founders say we hang together, or surly we all will hang… that’s the point …defend liberty for all people of all races… divide and conquer
Well said, Courtney.
Progressive liberal arguing 101: call your opponent a racist. Everything they say after that subsequently has no valid point. The opponent must then immediately drop everything and engage in a useless debate about how they are not racist, have black friends, etc. The liberal progressive subsequently claims (empty) victory in the argument.
Real life example: Obama is a lousy president.
Liberal: Well, your just racist.
Congratulations, half of TTAG. You were dumb enough to label Cliven Bundy a racist and write him off.
Yup, it truly shows how effective the Thought Police, and program known as NewSpeak, has become.
Programs such as compulsory public education, you mean?
Check out The Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels, in particular the chapter that lists the things that must be accomplished in order to take over a society.
Then, take a cold, hard, objective look around contemporary America.
This ^ +1000
mother of God….. that’s creepy. Communism didn’t die at the end of the cold war, it took a beating, changed strategy, then simply took the fight to American Soil.
My favorite thing about this whole Bundy-is-racist debacle was seeing the suited up white man on the news asking a young black man at the ranch if he knew about what Cliven Bundy said about black people. And then asking him if he felt offended with this almost confused tone. I wondered if he was asking himself, “Wow, do I really need to explain it to this man? Bundy hates him because he’s black and he just doesn’t realize it. How can I enlighten him?” as though he had something to offer in the situation.
Anyone who actually reads what he said would understand that it wasn’t racist. The worst part about it is that if you look at it you can only arrive at one of two conclusions:
1. Cliven Bundy is a certified, white, plantation-owning, slave-driving racist.
2. Cliven Bundy is a white man who’s not a racist but who has a more commanding and realistic grasp on the evolution of race in this country during his life time.
If you believe the former, then fine enjoy your burden of proof. If you believe the latter, however, you get to acknowledge that not only is he probably right but the form of slavery he’s talking about is much more insidious and terrifying.
Yikes…this again. I’ve been accused of being RACIST because I think Obama may be the worst human ever. This after 2 brown sons, 2 BEAUTIFUL BLACK wives(1 ex!), actual black friends, teaching Sunday school to small brown children, etc. The PC police had a lot to work with over Bundy. Don’t know if Bundy’s the next KKK incarnation-dont care.
Well, you divorced a black woman, so it must have been for racist reasons. {/sarcasm}
http://img.hopaj.pl/images/6/f/6f8497b3bf7b5c0e738f2e2c500ad5ca.jpg
I wondered what had happened to J.R. “Bob” Dobbs.
Like I’ve been saying, stop falling for the knee jerk reaction divide and conquor tactics.
You can see the establishment’s playbook from a mile away and plays they like to run are as follows:
Bundy is:
– Racist
– a Misogynist
– Anti-Semtic
– Anti-Gay
– a Child Molester
– Hates the Poor
– Hates Puppies
– Etc.
Being aware of the empty emotional attacks that will likely be deployed by the enemy to disrupt an honorable cause!
Yeah I personally was waiting for some “startling new evidence” to pop up and suddenly reveal the “Bundy ranch” was like the Jackson ranch and he was touching little boys. The Gov has done it before. In 09 I think it was they did that to a marine that spoke out against the federals. But, instead they played the race card. Typical.
You forgot “he lies, his feet stink, and he don’t love Jesus.”
Really is that kinda mornin, really was that kinda night!
Thanks for this post, Courtney.
Sean Hannity doesn’t give a shit about personal liberties – you’d know that if you’ve ever heard him talk about marijuana, military & police spending, or the post-9/11 security/police state.
No sh1t, I was really surprised. Stopped watching him.
Cliven Bundy: Lost in Translation
http://www.the-spearhead.com/2014/04/25/cliven-bundy-lost-in-translation/
Bundy is a traditional Western rancher racist type, a member of a religious group with a long, sordid history of racism, the Mormon Church. The utter stupidity of those defending this law-breaker is nothing short of astonishing.
Well now, that’s golden coming from the guy who is basically calling all Western Ranchers and Mormons racists…can you say hypocrisy?
You and Hannibal both win Golden “Tool” awards.
See now your stereotyping him just liberals do to us.
And you have just demonstrated your own prejudice and racist views by applying your preconceived stereotypical rationale to this discussion. You have also demonstrated your own “utter stupidity” regarding the ability to understand what drives people to interpret and draw conclusions about a given situation. Also given your comments you are probably a leftist racist who thinks the government is there to offer a helping hand.
Exactly. And ditto on the leftist racism. The left is far more racist than the right, once you get inside their heads, and realize what they truly believe.
Paul, I have to agree with the others- some days you seem perfectly rational, and others I wonder-
You are shooting the messenger…
Bundy is a traditional Western rancher racist type, a member of a religious group with a long, sordid history of racism, the Mormon Church.
It is quite amusing, Paul, to come across your slur of Mormons, referring to them as having “a long sordid history of racism.’ 23% of the Mormons in the world are racial minorities. 50% are not Americans. Joseph Smith ran for president in 1844 on a platform of abolition. Missourians chased Mormons out of the territory on threat of ‘annihilation’ because they considered Mormons ‘abolitionist.’ Mormon churches in Utah have been integrated since day one. Though the LDS doctrine of priesthood changed several times, it never kept African Americans away from the church. The change of doctrine was welcome when it came.
Now you live in a white suburb in Missouri, but you but call the ranchers racist? What would you know of the ranchers in the American west, that land on the other side of the Rockies unknown to you, other than a
typicalstereotypical bunch of slurs you heard from fellow Lutherans, 98% of whom are white?You grew up in Louisiana, didn’t you? And all your undergraduate and graduate education was in Chicago, wasn’t it? Both Louisiana and Chicago (certainly in your youth) were demonstrably more segregated and racist than Utah at the time.
The Lutheran church has many fewer minority members (hardly any..) than the Church of Latter Day Saints. There is probably a reason minorities are not attracted to Lutheran congregations.
The history of the Mormon church’s views of blacks is well known.
Until 1978, the Mormons prohibited most Black men from being a part of their lay priesthood.
And then there is this:
Brigham Young said this despite the LDS scripture verses that state people may be cursed unto the 3rd and 4th generation, but if any were to repent and make restitution they would be forgiven and the curse lifted.[24] This is reiterated in Doctrine and Covenants 124:50&52 as well as Mosiah 13:13,14 and Deut 5:9,10. Brigham Young explained that access to the priesthood would be given to blacks after their resurrection and not on this earth:
“Why are so many of the inhabitants of the earth cursed with a skin of blackness? It comes in consequence of their fathers rejecting the power of the Holy Priesthood, and the law of God. They will go down to death. And when all the rest of the children have received their blessings in the Holy Priesthood, then that curse will be removed from the seed of Cain, and they will then come up and possess the priesthood, and receive all the blessings which we now are entitled to. The volition of the creature is free; this is a law of their existence, and the Lord cannot violate his own law; were he to do that, he would cease to be God. He has placed life and death before his children, and it is for them to choose. If they choose life, they receive the blessings of life; if they chose death, they must abide the penalty. This is a law which has always existed from all eternity, and will continue to exist throughout all the eternities to come. Every intelligent being must have the power of choice, and God brings forth the results of the acts of his creatures to promote his kingdom and subserve his purposes in the salvation and exaltation of his children. If the Lord could have his own way, he would have all the human family to enter into his church and kingdom, receive the Holy Priesthood and come into the celestial kingdom of our Father and God, by the power of their own choice.”
President Young proclaimed that the “true eternal principals[sic]” of God are that “a man who has the African blood in him cannot hold one jot nor tittle of Priesthood”, and reiterated his conviction that only after death would black men achieve the priesthood: “In the Kingdom of God on the Earth the Africans cannot hold one particle of power in Government.”
Where does it say that Mr. Bundy is a Mormon? Got a citation?
Could have been Jesus Christ himself on the cross next to Bundy… People would still be tying a noose in the name of ” good”..
it’s irrelevant whether Bundy the man is a racist.
What is relevant is that he willingly and knowingly publicly espouses racial oppression, and sends a loud and clear signal to white racists and white race-hating groups that empowers them and rallies them. It’s grossly irresponsible. By the way, if Bundy is not a racist, he most certainly is a media whore. You don’t accidentally speak on national tv every single day. Look for future revelations that he has a media consultant, who sees future revenues in speaking rights, book rights, movie rights. Bundy very likely is being told that he could be the next basis for a reality show, ala Duck Dynasty and its corporate millionaire hillbillies with college degrees.
In the name of “good” stop defending and making excuses for this idiot.
No . . . you stop.
+1 Paul
Cut the crap, McCain. You are a troll crying in a wilderness of your own making.
What the heck, I’ll throw in my 2 cents.
The whole situation reminds me of Monty Python’s The Life of Brian, with the Romans representing the federal government and Brian and his followers representing Bundy and his. The Jews were so frustrated living under the yoke of the Romans that they ran to anybody to be their savior without taking any effort to vet them. I personally thought he wasn’t the best man to rally behind because he was grazing his cattle on federal land. It wasn’t like the feds came in and stole his land (which happens often enough). The BLM’s response was grossly heavy handed, but Bundy had already fought this out in the courts and lost. I certainly don’t have a problem with his civil disobedience, I just thought he probably wasn’t the best poster child for the movement. And he should have known better than to say what he did with all the attention he was getting. Anyway Brian wasn’t a bad guy, he just wasn’t the messiah. And he didn’t deserve to be crucified, but he was. And so was Bundy. That’s just life. I’m not sure where the scene where Brian takes the ride on the alien spaceship fits in. I guess I’ll have to work on that.
There are a lot of cattle mutilations out west….
That’s an entirely different story, although it’s the truth. It never stopped; it just stopped being something the media wanted to cover.
The phenomenon may indeed be centuries old. Read a new book, STALKING THE HERD, by Christopher O’Brien, who spent a couple decades going to mutilation sites and personally investigating them, in the San Luis Valley of Colorado and New Mexico, which was the original epicenter of the phenomenon.
It’s got everything. Cattle mutilations. “UFO” sightings. Black helicopters (I saw one at about 1/4 mile range, through binoculars, in Virginia; it was a very dark olive greet, which looks black at first sight. It had no markings whatsoever.) Bigfoot encounters. Often all at the same time!
Dear Mr. Daniels,
I could not disagree with you more. While I understand that the totality of any individual isn’t defined by only one statement they make over their life. However, meeting someone and taking a picture with them isn’t actually the litmus test in making that kind of judgement. For reference, the owner of the Clippers had an NAACP lifetime achievement award. People can be gracious and bigots at the same time.
I also understand that people evolve and hold different views over time as well. My completely unscientific uninformed guess is that if at this seasoned age he has evolved only to the point where he can still postulate about the value of freedom for a whole race, while he has been on a decades long battle that has at its core freedom. Then dude is a flaming racist.
Thanks for the concern jr. She divorced me. After she screwed her former boyfriend a month after our marriage. Oh I see how insane she is on Facebook. BTW I don’t think Bundy is the incarnation of all evil in the world. Lighten up rev.
It was a joke…very poor, apparently.
I was just trying to summarize the knee-jerk jump some people make to make the claim of “racist” even when it is ridiculous to make such a claim.
JR I wasn’t offended. I’m 60 years old & happy with who I ended up with. The huge flap over the Clippers owner is also ridiculous. Old fart didn’t want his HOT ex/still girlfriend screwing Magic(LOL).
Thanks again Mr Daniels, for speaking up for the truth, and for your service,
if that camo in the pic, and the Semper Fi sign-off refers to your USMC background.
Your post is one more example that TTAG is not about color of skin, sex, political affiliation, but ideas and reason, applied to our natural, god given right to self defense.
Thanks, Mr. Davis. You spoke from the heart, and that’s something we need much more of from good-hearted Americans.
The government doesn’t know the truth, the clubhouse is full of thieves and liars, don’t buy that crap from them. BS X LIAR = LIBERIAL. O.K. all keep hidden out there, we don’t know who is scoping us.
Still why is everybody sticking up for this guy again?
Do we think that private ranchers should be able to graze their cattle on public lands without paying a cent for it? I don’t…
Bundy is a criminal and should be locked.
I have no use for Bundy really, but this whole incident drives home two important themes (IMO):
1) The militarization of every federal agency is wildly apace and needs to be put to an end. I don’t sympathize with Bundy’s “right” to ignore courts, lie about his “ancestral claim” and do whatever the hell he wants on public land, essentially behaving like a welfare queen even when the law is clearly not in his favor. I don’t like his views on race and find this last ditch PR stunt an idiotic attempt to cover his ass that no thinking human being should buy into. But what I *really* don’t like is that the Feds were entirely willing to send out a BLM hit squad to harass and eventually murder a recalcitrant old fool and his family when all they needed to do was put a lien on his cattle. Every now and then (and increasingly more often) the powers that be in D.C. stop pretending that they have any moral authority and use excessive force on the citizenry if they think they can get away with it. Anyone who forgot about or was too young to remember Waco or Rudy Ridge can point to this as just one in a long string of federal government abuses, and THAT above all is what we should be focusing on.
2) Stop giving the MSM ANYTHING to work with. At all. No interviews, no public appearances, no explanations that they can parse into 30-second soundbites for the mouthbreathers who still watch network news, nothing more than a stern “no comment” or “go f–k yourself.” They are not on our side and they have proven that time and again. Even the presence of good PR and being in the moral right mean nothing to a muckracker media that has long since ignored any pretense of “objective” journalism and will do anything to paint its ideological rivals in a bad light. I’m convinced that even if Bundy hadn’t shot his mouth off with his quaint slavery apologia, they would’ve happily crafted their own narrative–and they were already in the process of doing so. They gleefully parroted Reid’s line calling Bundy & Co. domestic terrorists and recycled SPLC-like fearmongering of the “militia movement” like so much regurgitated cud. “Winning hearts and minds” with these disgusting mouthpieces and propagandists holding the microphone is futile.
I’m sorry but when you imply that black people had better family lives when under slavery you are just wrong. How that could be misconstrued as anything but at the very least dangerous ignorance, is beyond me.
He has a fundamental misunderstanding of traditional slavery but he does not view black people as any different than other humans because of the color of their skin. Agreeing with the last part (skin color inherently meaning something) is what I view the real “racists” believing imo.
“Agreeing with the last part (skin color inherently meaning something) is what I view the real “racists” believing imo.”
Well said, I would agree that that thought is a fundamental building block of that mentality.
“…but he does not view black people as any different than other humans because of the color of their skin.”
I think Mr Bundy’s statement itself, not to exclude the comments about other “groups,” are strong evidence that he does indeed view people differently based on their color and therefore believes that skin color means something.
Simply,
S/F
VDH nails it, as usual:
http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/racism-politics-history/?singlepage=true
Bundy seems like quite a colorful character, to be sure, and I’d be ok going shooting with him and later talking politics over some beers with him. Still, he doesn’t pay his range fees, doesn’t respect someone else’s property rights, defies court orders and doesn’t recognize the legitimacy of the federal government. These aren’t exactly lightweight “‘Tastes great!’, ‘Less filling!'” small caliber arguments, my friends. Yes, the oversized, overeager federal government overreacted and overreached and it may portend ill for us all. Still, Bundy isn’t exactly saintly in this case, indelicate or out-of-context comments notwithstanding.
Phew – he’s not racist. I’m relieved to find out he’s just an incendiary, extremist nutjob with a loose affiliation with the facts and an apparent desire to fulfill every stereotype of libertarians, small government activist, gun owners and militia members alike. I’m going to invite him over for dinner.
You left out egotistical publicity hound. Where does someone’s mental state have to be to stand in front of one reporter and one camera and start talking about what he knows about “the Negro” and “the Spanish?”
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