OPINION:
It was Ronald Reagan who famously warned of the dangers of government — who said in 1986 “the most terrifying words in the English language are, ’I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’ “
Now, more than three decades later, it’s the Cliven Bundy family who underscores that sentiment.
This week, Bundy and his sons stood before U.S. District Judge Gloria Navarro to face charges of threatening a federal officer, carrying and using a firearm and engaging in a conspiracy. The charges stemmed from four years prior when the Bundy family refused to pay federal grazing fees and engaged in a lengthy stand-off with armed federal officials — namely, Bureau of Land Management agents — who circled and took up guard outside their ranch in Nevada.
Ultimately, the feds, under the watchful and permissive eyes of Barack Obama’s presidency, arrested Cliven, now 71, and his sons, Ryan, 44, and Ammon, 42, and charged them with numerous felonies. Those three, along with another, Ryan Payne, faced what some believed were certain prison sentences in court this week.
But Navarro freed them.
And she came down hard on the feds while doing so, slinging about words like “reckless” violations and “flagrant” disregard for law, accusing they purposely withheld evidence from the defense and thumbed their noses at justice, as the Los Angeles Times noted. Know what else the feds did Navarro found egregiously unconstitutional?
They set up armed snipers around the Bundy’s ranch, and installed surveillance cameras to catch the family’s comings and goings.
UnAmerican indeed.
The case had transfixed a nation and seemed to galvanize a movement that pitted patriots versus Big Government — old tymey Reaganesque constitutionalists versus new wave Obama progressives-slash-socialists — Western cowboy pragmatism and independence versus East Coast elitism and intellectual snobbery.
And the Bundys won.
“I’ve got my sweetheart beside me, I’m feeling pretty good,” Cliven said, stepping from his jail clothes and donning his trademark cowboy hat for the first time in a couple years, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported. “But I’m not used to being free. I’ve been a political prisoner for right about 700 days today. I come in this court an innocent man and I’m going to leave an innocent man.”
That’s a good ending for a long and horrendous fight. As for the rest of America, the larger lesson should be the age-old lesson, the one that Reagan reminded but that founders fought — and it goes like this: Government is not a friend. It’s a force to control, lasso, curb and if necessary, fight.
Cheryl Chumley may be contacted at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.