During a speech on Saturday, lawbreaking Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy claimed that he received direction from God regarding the standoff between Bundy’s supporters and federal agents this past April. Bundy also stated that the Constitution is holy scripture inspired by Jesus Christ and compared it to the Bible and the Book of Mormon. The rancher also lamented the fact that there weren’t any brown or black people at the Independent American Party event, which was held in St. George, UT.
Members of the fringe political party, which is only officially recognized in two states (Utah and Arizona), gathered to hear Bundy and former Arizona sheriff Richard Mack, who is a rabid supporter of Bundy’s and is a well-known anti-government zealot. Bundy, who hasn’t paid federal grazing fees in over 20 years, complained about the small turnout at the day-long event, as roughly 100 people showed up to the St. George Lexington Hotel for Bundy’s speech. At the same time, Bundy wished the summit had drawn a more diverse audience.
“Where is all of your college students? Where’s our young and where’s our old? Where’s our black and where’s our brown? Where are you people? Aren’t you interested in freedom and liberty? I’m not here to talk to a club.”
Hmmm, I wonder if the lack of brown and black people might have something to do with Bundy’s assertion a few months ago that African-Americans do nothing but sit on porches and might be happier if they were still slaves. Below is an excerpt from a New York Times article in April where Bundy discussed “the Negro.”
“I want to tell you one more thing I know about the Negro,” he said. Mr. Bundy recalled driving past a public-housing project in North Las Vegas, “and in front of that government house the door was usually open and the older people and the kids — and there is always at least a half a dozen people sitting on the porch — they didn’t have nothing to do. They didn’t have nothing for their kids to do. They didn’t have nothing for their young girls to do.
“And because they were basically on government subsidy, so now what do they do?” he asked. “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.”
When confronted over his remarks days later on CNN, Bundy blamed Martin Luther King, Jr. for why people think he’s racist.
If I call — if I say Negro or black boy or slave, I’m not — if those people cannot take those kind of words and not be offensive, then Martin Luther King hasn’t got his job done yet.
I’d say it is pretty clear why people of color wouldn’t want to attend a speech by self-proclaimed Negro expert Cliven Bundy. However, it is apparently still a mystery to him.
During his speech, Bundy also claimed that the nation’s Constitution is a divinely inspired document and is therefore holy scripture.
“If our Constitution is an inspired document by our Lord Jesus Christ, then isn’t it scripture? Isn’t it the same as the Book of Mormon and the Bible?”
Bundy got no resistance from the audience regarding those comments as attendees shouted their approval. The rancher, having already claimed that the laws of the United States were brought to us by Jesus, then discussed how God inspired him to stand up to the Bureau of Land Management. Per Bundy’s account, God spoke to him directly and told him to take up arms against federal agents and start a civil war.
“If the standoff with the Bundys was wrong, would the Lord have been with us? Could those people that stood without fear and went through that spiritual experience … have done that without the Lord being there? No they couldn’t…The Lord told me … if (the sheriff doesn’t) take away these arms (from federal agents), we the people will have to face these arms in a civil war. He said, ‘This is your chance to straighten this thing up.””
It is easy to dismiss Bundy as a complete whackjob with an extremely limited sphere of influence. For the most part, he lost the support of the conservative media when he made his ignorantly racist statements in April. However, while he is only speaking in front of small groups and gatherings, he does appeal to a certain fringe element of this country. And that fringe element is very dangerous. The fact that Bundy has not faced any real repercussions for his seditious actions makes him and his supporters feel more emboldened.
Therefore, we shouldn’t just ignore his ignorant statements. When he says crazy and outrageous things, they should be documented. When Bundy calls out to so-called sovereign citizens and anti-government militias and tries to spur them to action, it needs to be pointed out. Cliven Bundy is a domestic terrorist with insanely radical ideas who wants to inspire a movement. Because of that, he cannot simply be ignored.
Image via The Spectrum
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