Most of the libertarians I’ve run into would openly reject that part.
“Land ownership by right of conquest” was something they were quite happy to support. Mostly on the grounds of “hey, all land was conquered at some point, and you’ve gotta have land ownership or you’re a commie, right?”.
Yes, exactly. I suspect many libertarians secretly hope for something like this, without being willing to admit it, possibly even to themselves.
Supporters of a return to monarchy always imagine they will be selected king - or duke, at minimum.
It’s portmantelicious.
In other words, the land became public as the result of a bailout. Since the bailout clearly should not have occurred, it make sense to privatize the land.
That doesn’t make sense.
I recall reading this piece in the times recently.
Horrified, Mr. Finley did his best to publicize Malheur’s remaining bounty of waterfowl, shorebirds, egrets, herons, cranes and ibises. In 1908, he persuaded President Theodore Roosevelt to designate Malheur Lake a wildlife refuge. But Congress denied any funding for its management, water rights were not granted and, as droughts hit and lake levels dropped, settlers squatted on the lake bed. By the 1930s, after four decades of overgrazing, irrigation withdrawals, grain agriculture, dredging and channelization, followed by several years of drought, Malheur had become a dust bowl.
Ranches failed, livestock starved, homesteaders went bust and the primary occupation in the valley became suing one’s neighbor over water rights.
Conservationists won a major victory in 1934 when French’s former cattle empire was sold to the refuge, ensuring it had the water needed to flourish. John Scharff, the refuge manager from 1935 to 1971, worked closely with ranchers to establish grazing leases that funded the restoration of former wetlands and won public support for the effort. By 1968, cattle use was nearly as intense as during the days of the cattle barons. Ranchers still imagined themselves as the rugged individualists of their romantic past, though they had become heavily subsidized, grazing their herds on refuge meadows for fees that were often lower than those on private lands.
Those water rights, so vital to the purpose of a wildlife refuge, are derided in the PS article as a “bailout”. i suppose that if you’re intent on ignoring the birds for social justice, it makes sense to impute snister motives that don’t exist. But if you actually care about ecology, the only thing that matters is whether the USFWS is competently managing the refuge and whether any future owner is likely to do a better job. And frankly, I rather doubt that either the Paiutes or the ranchers are viable alternatives.
Native oregonian here. I never, ever thought in a thousand years malheur would be in the news. Most people can’t even find the state, let alone the county, let alone the refuge.
With a name as @flyfishidaho, I not only know where you are coming from, but we probably have mutual friends. Us liberals and rednecks in the NW get along pretty well, and these Bundy SOBs are ruining it. As you know, as a fisherman, it is the responsibility to maintain the ecosystem you enjoy. The birds, the fish, the game.
FSM, that’s why it irritates me so much. We are all on the same side.
Occupy wasn’t terrorist, it was a protest. This? It has guns, it has people willing ot use those guns that are a stateless organization that wish to use fear/terror to get there way.
Just because it isn’t brown doesn’t mean it can’t be a terrorist and just because people are pissed at how things are does not mean they deserve to have sergeant pepper-spray hose them down.
Which, given time for feudal groups to unify, would start to look like city states!
Which, given time for infrastructure to develop, would start to look like kingdoms!
Which, given time for market economies to develop, would start to look like modern democracies!
Send 'em a care package of meth and truck-stop vodka and wait for the fireworks.
God Bless The Internet 
D
“Private business stole it fair and square!”
For all the infrastructure it built to make cattle ranching profitable (and the massive fraudulent handouts to well-connected and well-capitalized cattle corporations), the federal government enabled the great cattle empires of the 1870s only to watch them go belly up. But they were, of course, too big to fail: In a story as old as finance capitalism, the federal government bailed them out and bought back the land.
Your rugged individualists at work.
In other news, the FBI’s definition of domestic terrorists:
“Domestic terrorism” means activities with the following three characteristics:
- Involve acts dangerous to human life that violate federal or state law;
- Appear intended (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination. or kidnapping; and
- Occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the U.S.
Sounds like what’s going on here, though some like to contend that guns and things only ever save lives when held by the holy hands of sanctified patriots.
[edited so as not to have a bunch of short posts]
Huh, I thought the Dark Enlightenment was that Born-Again Christian Juggalo thing.
The original homestead act parcels were allocated in 160 acre chunks. Enough to make a go at it, and end up with a productive farm free and clear after five years.
But so much of the west is arid and not especially fertile. Ranching might be possible, but only with a grant of thousands of acres to support a smallish herd. By the standards of the day, a five thousand acre grant struck most eastern observers as positively obscene. So that sort of deaccessioning never happened, and the federal government owns a great deal of land that’s not of extraordinary value.
So basically, Rasputin?
What a vicious circle.
