Williamson on Bundy

This guy is right. ya'know.

...Of course the law is against Cliven Bundy. How could it be otherwise? The law was against Mohandas Gandhi, too, when he was tried for sedition...Every fugitive slave, and every one of the sainted men and women who harbored and enabled them, was a law-breaker, and who can blame them if none was content to submit to what passed for justice among the slavers?...

 The more white-shoe types who invoke historical figures bring up Lincoln's quote about the law.  Kinda cute:  Lincoln, a/k/a "Mr. Habeas Corpus."  Or "Mr. Free Press."

...The theory of modern government is fundamentally Hobbesian in its insistence that where political obedience is demanded, that demand must be satisfied lest we regress into bellum omnium contra omnes. I myself am of the view that there is a great deal of real estate between complete submission and civil war, and that acts such as Mr. Bundy’s are not only bearable in a free republic but positively salubrious....

Indeed.  The PajamaBoy President must be reminded, sometimes sharply, that his princelings and coterie are not welcome everywhere at any time.  That really hasn't happened until just now.

...Mr. Bundy is tapping into a longstanding tendency in the American West to view the federal government as a creature of the eastern establishment, with political and economic interests that are inimical to those of the West and its people. And it is not as though there is no evidence supporting that suspicion....

The District of Criminals ain't all that close to Wisconsin, either.  See, e.g., Petri (recently), and Feingold.  And ask the City of Brookfield about EPA's asinine ideas about "waterways."  Mention Calhoun Road if the City management forgets.

Now for the meat of the matter:

....there is a more important question here: Is government our servant, or is it our master? The Left has long ago answered that question to the satisfaction of its partisans, who are happy to be serfs so long as their birth control is subsidized. But the Right always struggles with that question, as it must. The thing that conservatives seek to conserve is the American order, which (1) insists that we are to be governed by laws rather than by men and (2) was born in a violent revolution. Russell Kirk described the conservative ideal as “ordered liberty,” and that is indeed what we must aim for — keeping in mind that it is order that serves liberty, not the other way around. And it is the government that exists at the sufferance of the people, including such irascible ones as Mr. Bundy, not the other way around....

And let's talk about "equality before the law" a bit, too!!

...The citizens of this country, like those of any country, have an interest in the question of who is permitted to immigrate here and on what terms. Those interests and the ability to act in their furtherance are generally considered to be a substantial part of what we mean by “sovereignty.” Sovereignty has, historically, been regarded as a serious business. But if we judge the federal government by its actions rather than by the words of its functionaries, the defense of national sovereignty is many, many places down the federal to-do list from looking after tortoise welfare....

Yes, G W Bush, we're looking at YOU.  (Your successor gets it next)

...If we are to have the rule of law, then, by all means, let’s have the rule of law: Shut down those federal subsidies and IRS penalties in states that did not create their own exchanges under the Affordable Care Act.... And let’s enforce the ACA’s deadlines with the same scrupulosity with which the IRS enforces its deadlines. Let’s see Lois Lerner and a few hundred IRS employees thrown in the hole for their misappropriation of federal resources, lying to Congress, etc. — and let’s at least look into prosecuting some elected Democrats for suborning those actions. And if you want to get to the real problem with illegal immigration, let’s frog-march a few CEOs, restaurateurs, and small-time contractors off to prison for violating our immigration laws — and they can carry a GM product-safety manager and a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration executive under each arm. Let’s talk about enumerated powers....

IOW, f*&^ the D.C. jerks the same way they f*&^ the citizens.  (Here's a bet:  Lerner, a criminal, will not lose her pension.)

...I have the strangest feeling that a great many residents of Washington would not fare especially well under any robust interpretation of the rule of law. It all makes you not want to think too hard about the fact that President Obama has ordered the assassination of more than one U.S. citizen with no obvious legal authority for doing so....

A couple of meaningful bumps delivered to the Beltway won't hurt us.  And if it takes a bit more than a "bump," then a body-slam is the appropriate escalation.

HT:  Cold Fury