Props

I'm a little late to the Cliven Bundy party, but I want to give credit to two different entities for their handling of the Cliven Bundy situation with the Bureau of Land Management.

The first one is to Glenn Beck for being the voice of reason. Like Beck, I have a big concern with our ever-expanding federal government, and going into this story it looked like a federal agency was over responding with a thuggish display of force. Beck unraveled that narrative and revealed Bundy as a violence-monger who the government treated with patience for years.

Beck was confronted with someone who agreed with many of his politics, but had disturbing violent desires. To his credit, Beck did exactly what the socialist George Orwell did when he encountered Joseph Stalin: He dedicated himself to destroying him as an enemy.

Beck's framing of the split among liberty-seekers over Bundy is the definitive way to look at this situation, as the peaceful Martin Luther King, Jr. approach versus the violence Malcom X approach.

I like Beck, but he makes himself a whipping boy of the left with his support for the gold standard, declaring America a Christian nation and general  alarmism. It's risky to embrace Beck, but I don't care. Adults can see that Beck has been brilliant on this issue and it reflects well on his character and intelligence.

The other entity that needs credit here is the federal government and President Obama.

Bundy and his militia supporters probably don't want to die, but if they do die they want to become martyrs. The strategy they chose was to put the women in the front so if either side starts a shootout, the cameras will show the women being shot. That's some Occupy Wall Street-style propagandizing, and sadly fools fall for it.

I don't like seeing police forces back down from protesters who are essentially holding themselves hostage, but it was a smart move the government played here by ending the standoff and slinking away. Bundy was trying to make another Ruby Ridge or Waco here, and the Obama administration denied him that play.