I’ve been inundated with opinions on the legality, morality, and constitutionality of the Bunkerville, Nevada public lands standoff between the ranching family of Cliven Bundy and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the FBI, and other law enforcement agencies.

After listening to many opinions and perspectives I’m coming closer to drawing some conclusions. For starters, as a legal matter, Cliven Bundy doesn’t have a legal legal to stand on.

That doesn’t remotely mean that he’s wrong. 

From the moment the ink was dry on the parchment creating it, the federal government has used, abused, and expanded its power into a grotesque mockery of what the Founders envisioned. The federal government was never supposed to occupy more land than it absolutely needed to function, much less control huge swathes of entire states. They have made their tyranny “legal” by passing laws and writing regulations, but legality is merely a concept… it doesn’t mean that laws stripping power from the citizenry are moral, or constitutional, or that we should blindly obey them.

The subjugation of women was legal. Slavery was legal. Most importantly, the democides of more than 262 million souls by their own governments  in the 20th century alone after first disarming them were legal.

In far too many instances, and especially in regards to corrupted governments, “legal” merely means that a self-serving government has given itself carte blanche to pillage the citizenry—and kill them, if needed—in the name of itself.

You can ask President Obama what he thinks of “mere legality” and the importance of following laws as they are written.

It has become painfully obvious that the most apt metaphor describing our bloated and out-of-control government is that of an aggressive cancer. It started out small, but it inevitably, irresistibly began corrupting the body that created and sustains it. It is arguably in an end phase, a final burst of destructive energy, where it threatens to destroy the host entirely and itself in the process.

The natural reaction of the body politic is that it has begun generating massive amounts of cytotoxic T cells (the “killer T”) to fight the cancer. Those killer T cells attempting to save the body by fighting the cancer of government are the unorganized militia.

We’ve described the unorganized militia on numerous occasions at Bearing Arms (most recently here), and its role has never significantly changed. It exists as a bulwark against enemies both foreign and domestic. The Founders specifically included the self-evident right to keep and bear arms for a very simple reason. They’d just fought a long and costly war against a tyranny that was entirely legal, and wanted to ensure that citizens would be armed “with every terrible implement of war” to keep the new United States federal government in check, and if need be, depose that government and begin again.

We’ve watched the unorganized militia grow massively in recent years. We’ve seen citizens stockpiling arms and ammunition of contemporary military utility at a pace that exceeds the production of the Second World War. Down deep in their bones, Americans have felt the conflict between individual liberty and the corrupted greed of the state brewing. They’ve quietly took action as tensions rose, and the cancerous tyranny spread.

The killer T cells are growing and spreading in response to the threat of this cancer.

The clash between the cancer and the body politic may be imminent, and there is good reason to believe that the Bundy Ranch standoff could possibly develop into the catalyst.

Senate Majority Leader and Nevada Senator Harry Reid warns us that the battle over the ranch is far from over, and that the citizenry cannot be allowed to win:

Reid tells News4’s Samantha Boatman his take on the so-called cattle battle in southern Las Vegas. “Well, it’s not over. We can’t have an American people that violate the law and then just walk away from it. So it’s not over,” Reid said.

In Reid’s diseased mind, the government must win, because the government must always win. The cancer must be fed.

Former Congressman Ron Paul makes some interesting points in a conversation with Neil Cavuto, pointing out the fact that government often resorts to force when it can’t get its way with coercion.

Also writing about the situation at the ranch, a writer for Ranger Up notes that things could quickly get out of control:

This is, in essence, a case about far more than cattle or tortoises (was that a children’s book?). It goes to the heart of state’s rights as well as the rights of private business. Can people say no to a federal agency? Do people have any rights, or are the declarations of agencies such as the BLM like edicts from a king? Does a state have any right to control its own land, or is it only occupied by them under the permission of the federal government?

These are, of course, issues our country has been facing for a good number of years. But what happens when several groups of opposing sides regarding the answers to these questions all gather in the same spot—and most of them are heavily armed?

Rest assured, all of these ingredients add up to something that could very well explode into something much, much larger on a moment’s notice. If we see behavior like we did at the sieges of the Branch Davidians or Randy Weaver’s residence, the amount of armed militia already on site in Nevada may well be the catalyst of an event that drastically shapes our near future on a great number of issues.

Yes, Bundy has defied court orders dating back to 1993. But his case—that the courts are only doing what they’re told by the federal government and that he essentially has no recourse—is not at all without merit and should not be quickly dismissed given the situation. The concept of a heavy-handed Fed declaring “this is ours whether you like it or not” should give anyone pause for serious concern.

It’s worth noting that the actions of the BLM and federal authorities in this case have been stated to be their method of “resolving” the case. I think Stefan Molyneux of Freedom Radio put it succinctly when he said that their method of resolution boils down to:

“Give us all your cattle to pay the fines we imposed on you to save a tortoise we are currently euthanizing… Or we will shoot your family.”

The situation at the Bundy Ranch is not over. There exists the very real possibility of the federal government advancing yet again with heavily armed agents against the ranch and those who refuse to concede to the federal government’s “legal” tyranny.

If they commit such a crime—and a clear moral crime it will be, regardless of the so-called legality of it—the federal government could very well find itself under attack across the nation from citizens who have simply had enough of the cancer that is a corrupt and tyrannical government that has shown a willingness to throw constitutionality and legality to the wind in order to advance its own agenda of consolidating power and stripping the Republic of even the illusion of liberty.

Never has the need for a well-armed citizenry been more apparent.

Image credit for the patriot comes courtesy of POF-USA.