Shit's Getting Real Out West

By Charles Pierce, Esquire

14 May 14

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixl4QqMv2o4

t's really time for the Republican party, at the local, state, and party levels, to man up here, or else to say clearly that individual acts of seditious lawlessness are part of the party's basic philosophy of government. Maybe each Republican state committee can have an annual Calhoun-Davis Day Dinner.

Their message Saturday was clear amid the dust: This was the latest challenge by citizens saying they are defending state and local rights against an increasingly arrogant federal government that has overstepped its role in small communities such as Blanding. The protagonist this time wasn't a private rancher like Cliven Bundy, who prevailed in a standoff with the Bureau of Land Management in Nevada. This protest was the brainchild of a public official, San Juan County Commissioner Phil Lyman, who contends that this town of 3,500 residents has tried hard to compromise with the bureau to reopen scenic Recapture Canyon to all-terrain vehicles. BLM officials banned the vehicles to protect archaeological sites, a move residents say has cheated them out of a prime recreational area. Unlike in the Bundy incident, no guns were brandished here, but the words were volatile. "If you make a rule that I have to lick your boots," Lyman said of federal officials, "I'm just not going to do that."

Phil, of course, is what Joseph Warren would have been, has Warren been a CPA.

Lyman said the much-publicized ride on the northern section of the 11-mile trail is less about the canyon specifically and more about public access to trails in general. "This is not about Recapture. It is not about ATVs. It is not politics, it is not economics," he said. "It is part of who I am. It is part of Blanding, and it is our culture, too. We don't not want to see groups come in and say these trails did not exist ... it was a thoroughfare since the mid-1800s."

Which is about when a big-government program called the U.S. Cavalry came along and cleared out all the natives so that, one day, Phil Lyman could help people dodge taxes and act like a jackass on weekends.

(And, of course, the local Native Americans objected, too, but they haven't been relevant since "the mid-1800s.")

This is an elected official, not some racist wrinkle-bag like Cliven Bundy. If you vote for Phil Lyman, you are voting for sedition. If you are Fox News, and you celebrate him, you are celebrating sedition. It is long past time for the Republican party to fish or cut bait on this end of movement conservatism. Either support the seditious philosophy of local control, or oppose it. But they shouldn't be allowed any more to use its energy during election years and then walk away after the votes are cast.

San Juan County Sheriff Rick Eldredge and County Commissioner Phil Lyman confirmed Tuesday that county officials have proposed removing barricades and providing resources to operate Lake Powell, Natural Bridges and Hovenweep national monuments, and the Needles District of Canyonlands National Park...Lyman said county officials have alerted park superintendents as to their plans. "The last thing we want to do is surprise everybody," he said. "We're begging them for any information they're willing to give us, and they're passively resistant. Philosophically, they may agree with what we're doing, but they can't come in and say, ‘Let's work out a deal,' and they can't accept any help from the state." He said efforts are not politically motivated on either side.

Yeah, we see that now, Phil. Thanks.

There far too much loose talk in respectable Republican circles about nullification, secession, and the crackpot theories of county government that used to be the exclusive ideological province of the Posse Comitatus movement. (There is also too much loose talk about impeachment, too, but that's a whole 'nother kettle of scrod.) Increasingly, there is no apparent fringe to conservative rhetoric, let alone any real limits. Somebody within that party has to step up and rein this lunacy in, or else embrace it publicly as the party's basic philosophy, or else euphemisms may not be the only things that die in those deserts.