The Antiplanner understands politics well enough to know that polarization is sometimes useful. But I still find it annoying when people who don’t understand an issue use it to create unnecessary hysteria. On one hand Senator Harry Reid calls people protesting federal land policy “domestic terrorists.” On the other hand, some people hope that rancher Bundy’s stand will be the first shot in a “war on federal bureaucrats.”
The Bundy issue is neither war nor terrorism. It is a simple case of trespass. It won’t be solved by turning federal land over to the states or selling it. Nor will it be solved by demonizing ranchers, property rights advocates, or federal land managers.
For one thing, we can’t give the land “back to the states,” as some people advocate, because it was never state land to begin with. With the exception of Texas and a few Spanish land grants, pretty much all land west of the Mississippi River was, at one time, federal land. When Congress made Nevada a state, it offered it 4 million randomly selected acres. The state asked if Congress would be willing to give it 2 million but let it select the acres it wanted, and Congress agreed. The state eventually sold all but 2,500 of those acres.
