乔淼：“抗强拆英雄”Bundy真的成立吗？

choi

(1) I live in Boston, Massachusetts. We are liberal, anti-gun--whereas I am conservative and pro-gun, though I have never owned one--and have no ranch. So nobody here cares about this thing or person.
(2) I did not know what was going on until this morning, when I finished the first half of the latest PRINT issue of Economist (today another print issue is officially started). Please enjoy yourself.

The Cliven Bundy stand-off  |  Cowboys v Feds; A misguided insurrection revives an old debate about land in the West. Economist, Apr 26, 2014.
www.economist.com/news/united-st ... west-cowboys-v-feds

My comment:
(a) I read only three paragraphs, and can guess the rest. You see, it is widely known--check the Web, please--that many ranchers west of the Rockies simply want their cattle to graze on federal lands but will not pay a dime. There is no federal lands (including forests)--or Indian reservations--in Massachusetts, so we do not have such an issue here.
(b)
(i) The English surname Bundy is “variant of Bond.”
(ii) The English surname Bond refers to “a peasant farmer or husbandman, [derived from] Middle English bonde (Old English bonda, bunda, reinforced by Old Norse bóndi). * * * the term came to signify a farmer holding lands from, and bound by loyalty to, a lord”
Dictionary of American Family Names, by Oxford University Press.

choi

My comment: Some people are self-destructive.

Ralph Ellis and Greg Botelho, CNN Exclusive: Rancher Says He's Not Racist, Still Defiant Over Grazing Battle. CNN, Apr 25, 2014.
www.cnn.com/2014/04/24/politics/cliven-bundy-interview/

Quote:

"This stance made him a darling of some conservatives in the media and Republican circles upset over what they've deemed government overreach. Militiamen rallied by the side of the 67-year-old rancher as federal rangers tried to force him off his land. Bundy won that standoff, but he didn't stop talking [he had talked about how bad the feds were].

"in comments first reported by The New York Times and later seen on video [also in Nytimes.com]. [Bundy said,] 'They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton. And I've often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn't get no more freedom. They got less freedom.'

"On Thursday [Apr 24, 2014], in an exclusive interview with CNN's Bill Weir, Bundy was asked to elaborate on his remarks. * * * Weir at one point challenged the Nevada rancher about whether he was any more or less a 'welfare queen' since his cattle have been feeding off the government, literally, by eating grass on public land. Bundy's response: 'I might be a welfare queen. But I'll tell you I'm producing something for America and using a resource that nobody else would use or could use. I'm putting red meat on the table.'