The Constitution Party position on the deeper issues of federal control over public lands
by Darrell Castle
Cliven Bundy
It is April 2014. What in the world is happening in Clark County, Nevada? A better question might be who owns Nevada? The struggle in Nevada involves a 600,000 acre area called Gold Butte, near the Utah border. Mr. Cliven Bundy claims an inherent right to graze his cattle there since his family, he says, has lived there for more than 140 years and built much of the infrastructure in the local area. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) says Mr. Bundy owes $1,100,000 in grazing fees, having been in trespass for more than 20 years. Mr. Bundy refuses to acknowledge federal authority in Nevada.
Mr. Bundy believes, “We own this land and not the federal government”. Usually reported by the corporate media is the view that Mr. Bundy is illegally grazing his cattle on public lands in Clark County, Nevada. The BLM stands firmly on the premise that the land is public land, owned by the U.S. Government. The agency insists that it has exhausted its legal remedies and that Mr. Bundy has refused to comply with many court orders. They say they have no choice except to round up Mr. Bundy’s cattle and sell them for past due grazing fees. Mr. Bundy is willing to pay grazing fees but only to Clark County, Nevada, not to the Bureau of Land Management.
Mr. Bundy believes he has a prior right to graze his cattle on public lands due to his family’s existence on the land since the 1800’s, long before the existence of the BLM. But the federal government says wait a minute, we stole this land from the Indians many, many years ago, long before Nevada was a state and when by court precedent the land passes into statehood, that doesn’t mean we no longer own it.
Do either of these competing claims hold any validity? For the answer, we turn to the Constitution and the associated documents like the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration tells us that the purpose of government in, Mr. Jefferson’s immortal words “is to secure our God given rights”. The Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution were created by the states on behalf of “We the people”.
The Constitution created three branches of government with three separate functions acting as agent for the states. Article 1, Section 8, Clause 17 of the Constitution known as the Enclave clause authorizes Congress to purchase, own and control land in a state under specific and limited circumstances.
“To exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever over such district (not exceeding 10 miles square) as made by session of particular states, and the acceptance of Congress, become the seat of the government of the United States, and to exercise like authority over all places purchased by the consent of the legislature of the state in which the same shall be, for the erection of military forts, magazines, arsenals, stockyards and other needful buildings.”
The Enclave Clause authorized Congress to purchase land for the District of Columbia, Washington D.C., as we know it now, and also to purchase territory for military forts, magazines, arsenals, stockyards, and other such things. As you can see clearly, the Enclave clause does authorize Congress to do these things and to control land in a state under certain very limited circumstances. Those circumstances, though, certainly do not include protection of an endangered tortoise as federal government authority now insists is part of the reason for the seizure of Mr. Bundy’s cattle. It does not include selling so-called public lands to Chinese corporations for the building of solar energy plants as has been alleged. By the way, when the government uses the term “Public” what it really means is “U.S. Government”. The U.S. Government often refers to itself as the public, but in reality is simply the government. The question then becomes — who owns Nevada? Currently, the U.S. Government claims it owns approximately 87% of the state of Nevada. Shockingly, that is correct, 87%. However, there are movements in Nevada’s legislature from time to time demanding the return of what Nevadans see as illegally seized land. To the federal government, however, these movements are apparently just empty threats.
James Madison, who wrote most of the Constitution, said in Federalist #45 “The powers delegated by the proposed constitution to the federal government are few and defined”. Nevada Governor, Brian Sandoval, recently stated that “No cow justifies the atmosphere of intimidation which currently exists, nor the limitation of constitutional rights that are sacred to all Nevadans.” The Constitution Party wishes to thank Governor Sandoval for his support of Mr. Bundy in that regard. It would also be constitutionally-appropriate for a battalion of Nevada National Guardsmen, equipped for desert combat, to be called by the Governor to stand with the Bundy family and their supporters as they insist on preserving their Constitutional rights.
The protest was strong. The BLM has now released the Bundy cattle back to the Bundy family. The agency said it was concerned about the safety of its employees and of the public but there was no concern for the rights of the citizens. Is this the end of the dispute, or could the Clark County confrontation be just a preview of future conflict between the federal government and the citizens of various sovereign states? Time will tell.
Darrell Castle was the Constitution Party’s 2008 vice-presidential candidate and its former three-time national vice-chairman. He has announced his intentions to seek the party presidential nomination in 2016.
Article source
I actually dug a bit into this myself:
Summary and Reactions to Cattlemen and Libertarians
Very long story short, the Enclave Clause means that the federal government doesn’t enjoy primary jurisdiction outside of the lands enumerated in the Constitution; it does not, however, prevent it from owning parcels of land in other states. Thomas Jefferson was the one who openly advocated for federal land ownership; this advocacy led to the Land Ordinance of 1785 and the Northwest Ordinance, both of which ceded the original land claims west of the Appalachians that some (but not all) of the thirteen colonies possessed to the federal government and created the first framework for selling public lands to potential farmers.
Note that both ordinances predate the ratification of the Constitution, yet remained in effect after its passage.
This was done because Jefferson and some of the other Founding Fathers believed that yeoman farmers and private, individual agriculture would lead to self-sufficiency and a sense of ownership in the outcome of the country. This policy, which supported federal distribution of small land claims to individuals over large land claims to corporations or well-off individuals, continued for over 100 years.
Trouble is, most of Nevada’s land isn’t useful at “individual homestead” sizes, so little of it was handed out this way (much less than the 14% of private land we currently enjoy; most of the private lands in Nevada are actually railroad parcels handed out to subsidize construction of the transcontinental railroad system). That was okay, though – this entire region was originally governed by Mexico, which not only supported large land acquisitions (California Ranchos system) but also supported public-private partnerships involving government leases of public lands to private individuals; in fact, that was the only way to mine in New Spain or Mexico since neither Spain nor Mexico believed in private mineral rights. These partnerships were put into place in recently acquired California during the Gold Rush since there weren’t many formal government institutions before statehood in 1850, and were later extended to cattle ranchers in Nevada and other desert areas so they could work the land despite the land being too poor to remain economically viable at 640 acres. This worked well for everyone – the government picked up some free revenue from leasing fees and everyone could work public lands without the hassles of ownership, dealing with competing private property claims, or any of that other messy stuff. It was a pretty profitable arrangement for everyone for quite a while.
As anyone superficially versed in Latin American history can attest, though, public-private partnerships only work as long as the government is feeling cooperative. Sooner or later, the government will change its mind, and once it does, it “realizes” that everything of economic value is on “public land” (technically true, in a titular sense) and thus “belongs to the public”. That spirit hit the west in the ’70s when the environmental movement realized that it, too, was part of the “public” and could also make various claims to how public land was managed. Ranchers and miners have been howling ever since.
To make a short story even shorter, a lot of the Western US is governed like a banana republic because, well, it’s been governed like a banana republic for over 150 years – it’s just that nobody cared until the government finally started to act like one. The only lasting solution is the privatization of all public land claims in Nevada and the rest of the United States so that land owners aren’t at the whims of fickle government policies. Until that happens, we can expect to see more people like Cliven Bundy staging more protests.