What did LaVoy Finicum die for?
Aaron Bady
... To patriots like Finicum and the Bundys, the movement to reclaim public lands from the federal government is a variation on America's cowboys and Indians story, but in their version they're the cowboys and the Indians. On the one hand, they position themselves as the descendants of men and women who first won the West, the settlers who originally built this country. On the other, they see themselves as the victims of a huge land grab, locals who have been forcefully dispossessed. That makes them both an oppressed minority and the conquering heroes of manifest destiny.
To understand this precarious and contradictory position which sits at the radical edge of a larger, well-funded land-transfer, anti-environmental movement that seeks to privatize public property - we have to go back to this nation's original sin. When the United States took the West from its first inhabitants by treaty, deception and force of arms the government put forward .. much the same doctrine that Finicum preached around the West to ranchers groups; he called it productive beneficial use. Put simply: the land belongs to those who use it productively, those whose ranching, farming and stewardship benefit the land ...
In 1812, the General Land Office began overseeing the disposal of the lands the United States government was busily acquiring in the West. The Preemption Act of 1841 and the Homestead Act of 1862 supplied guidelines for the disposal; the former gave land to those who were already farming it and the latter to those who applied to settle it. But the underlying principle was the same: having taken the lands from the native peoples, the federal government was to be only a temporary steward of the land until it was given to a productive beneficial user ...
The commission's 1970 report One Third of the Nation's Land argued that most public lands would not serve the maximum public interest in private ownership and urged the reversal of the policy that the United States should dispose of ... public domain lands. In 1976, Congress passed the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, repealing most of the old disposal laws and dictating that public lands would be retained in Federal ownership in perpetuity, except for special cases. Though the Bureau of Land Management leases the land for development and a variety of commercial uses, their official mandate is to keep the land open and accessible to all users, preserving it for the future ...
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-bady-malheur-ideology-20160207-story.html
KT2000
(20,586 posts)fund American Lands Council that tries to get local governments get control of federal land.
Wellstone ruled
(34,661 posts)Amazing how ignorant of fact our Nation is. All one needs is to read the Salt Lake City Tribune,one can see these groups at work in real time.
phantom power
(25,966 posts)valerief
(53,235 posts)rjsquirrel
(4,762 posts)and carrying a loaded gun while doing so.
Next question?
earthshine
(1,642 posts)Perhaps he took a long look at his desperate, go-nowhere life, and decided the best thing he could do was martyr himself for his cause.
Downwinder
(12,869 posts)Things were going too well for him on this planet.
SwankyXomb
(2,030 posts)and that's all he will be remembered for.
Ford_Prefect
(7,917 posts)than elected government in Washington. The article below lays out the history that leads to Finicum's version of reality which has been materially supported by Koch and other right wing Dark money interested in exploiting public lands.
"What Is the Link Between the Oregon 'Militiamen' and Mormonism?"
http://www.alternet.org/belief/what-link-between-oregon-militiamen-and-mormonism
We see a 55-year-old family man, who has had ample time to think, make a conscious choice to throw his life away.
The reasons and history are a dark period of the not so distant Mormon past, during which blended Mormon mythology along with paranoid anti-communism at the hands of W. Cleon Skousen lead to a vile mix of culture and belief.
Skousen - who died in 2006 at the age of 92 - was a popular, prolific writer who had stints in the FBI and as Salt Lake City police chief. He was also one of the most prominent and influential ultraconservative political activists in mid-century America, inspiring the John Birch Societys febrile brand of anticommunist conspiracy thinking.
It could very well be that the Kochs had more to do with this event than coincident purpose. They have funded right wing Militia groups through 3rd party organizations and spent millions on proposed transfer of Federally owned land to local government and private hands.