<\/a><\/p>\nIf any group other than white men had done such a thing, well, it’s reasonable to expect a different response. Imagine what would have happened if a bunch of heavily armed campus radicals took over the headquarters, or to inch closer to armageddon, black protestors or some frustrated Muslims? What would happen then?<\/span><\/p>\nWe have a pretty good idea, I think.<\/span><\/p>\nNo matter, what seems to be happening now is that a long-simmering and predictable feud over grazing rights has morphed into a movie-of-the-week. The white guys want the government to hand over land it owns so that they\u2014The People\u2014may use it as they see fit, using it for grazing, mining, logging or opening up paintball camps. As far as I know, the First Nations of America have yet to be consulted.<\/span><\/p>\nThe Citizens for Constitutional Freedom are not impoverished. They’re not persecuted, marginalized or threatened in any sort of coherent way. Frustrated by their perception of diminishing entitlements, they want to fight back against the forces that impede their ascent, even if they have no idea who or what those forces might be. <\/span><\/p>\nThey’re easy enough to make fun, these men. Asunder in a rapidly changing and globalized environment,\u00a0<\/span>they try to live as heroes in a mythic past, a place where their big sky ambitions could blossom unfettered by government, minorities or environmental regulations.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nIt’s sunset in the only America these men have ever wanted to live, and so they tilt toward windmills, deserving of our pity as much as our scorn.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Only white people could come up with a name like The Citizens for Constitutional Freedom.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":5628,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[427,159,3677,3501,3675,3676,3681,138,556,3680,1188,597,620,434,2189,3672,151,112,316,3673,3671,333,3674,3670,3679,3678,3130,3669,851,1754,719,1433],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5622"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5622"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5622\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5630,"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5622\/revisions\/5630"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}