On Sunday, during an Easter gathering at Mom's, my brother asked me what I thought about the whole Bureau of Land Management versus the Bundys kerfluffle. My answer initially... I don't really know. I told him I wasn't ready to join those conservatives I might usually be aligned with, that I was troubled by what I was learning about it and needed to learn more.
Today, we've learned more.
The charge of racist has been hung on Cliven Bundy. On first blush, I thought, well, that'd be an effective way for the government to shut Bundy down. Play the race card. It's done all the time now.
But given what I've read thus far, it's appearing more and more like Bundy has shut himself down:
“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.”
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.There's no way to defend those words. There simply isn't. I'm sure some will try but it'd be damned foolish.
I was troubled originally by the fact that Bundy was in essence breaking the law. There's plenty out there detailing that piece of the story too many conservatives were overlooking or ignoring but it was too troubling for me.
Did the government over-react to that lawlessness? Absolutely.
Has Harry Reid acted like an ass over all of it? Absolutely.
But is this a cause we should be supporting? I don't think so and now that Mr. Bundy has revealed more about himself than I think any of us wanted to know, I'm pretty positive that the discerning and prudent should walk away and walk away quickly.
Discernment and prudence are hard but necessary things.
Most necessary.
