Like many political observers, I’ve watched from a distance as a small band of right-wing extremists have taken over and occupied a the headquarters of a federal wildlife preserve in Oregon. In the week since the occupation began, a lot of ink has been spilled and a lot of film has been unspooled, much of it hyperbole.
The occupiers have been compared with ISIS and al Qaeda, and words like “treason” and “sedition” have been bandied about. These guys, however, are not calling for an overthrow of the government, nor do they represent an existential threat to the nation.
They are a small group of right-wingers who make for good television, but have little real influence.
Following a protest rally on Jan. 2, Ammon Bundy and about 25 “other militants” took over the headquarters of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Burns, Ore., “and moved into buildings where federal workers would have returned” Jan. 4.
Bundy later told a news conference that the takeover was in protest of “the federal government illegally (holding the) land, and “how the rights of Harney County ranchers Dwight and Steven Hammond had been violated. The two ranchers, who own ground adjacent to the refuge, are reporting to federal prison Monday to serve time for setting public land afire.” His goal was to “return the land to private citizens and help restore ranching.”
The goal, he said, was “to get the economics here in the county revived again, getting it hopping again.” He said there would be no violence “as long as government officials stayed away.”
I need to state up front that I disagree with the occupation’s goals. Federal ownership of land is implied in the Fifth Amendment’s takings clause, and the lands in question have been federal lands for as long as the territories that now make up Oregon were brought under U.S. control. The argument about the rejailing of the two ranchers and the use of terrorism statutes in that case is more problematic.
The lack of violence so far is encouraging, and the federal government needs to resolve this without turning it into a Waco or Ruby Ridge — without ceding to the militants on the land issue. Can this be done? I don’t know, but it has to be the goal.
That said, my bigger concern is the way some on the left have responded to the tactics in play here. I’ve participated in a few Facebook debates (from which some of my comments here are drawn) and have read and seen other responses that trouble me. My concern is that some of the rhetoric easily could be used at a later date by the government to jail progressive protesters.
Many on the left have taken to using words like “sedition,” “treason” and “insurrection” to describe what so far has been an armed protest. No violence has occurred, and no one has been hurt. The militants certainly gave broken the law, and there are guns on site, which brings the potential for violence, but words like “treason” “sedition” and “insurrection” are overheated. They are hyperbole driven less by the occupation and more by the identity of the occupiers.
Why do I say this? Guns aside, how different is this from Occupy Wall Street’s takeover of Zuccotti Park, a privately owned, publicly accessible park in lower Manhattan? Few on the left — certainly not me — opposed the Occupy movement and not only endorsed their aims but their tactics. Occupy was a movement composed of people who viewed themselves as aggrieved and unheard in the political arena who engaged in extra-legal action to remake public policy.
Then there was the union occupation of the Wisconsin statehouse in 2011, which had the left’s support. Again, protesters saw occupation as the only way to ensure that their perspectives could be heard or to prevent Gov. Scott Walker from gutting union rights.
Granted, there are differences — no guns — but the goals in Wisconsin and Zuccotti Park are similar; both actions were designed to influence government action. Isn’t that what Bundy and his posse are doing? I disagree with the cause being pushed by Bundy et al, and I find them to be a couple eggs short of a dozen. But we have to be careful not to be hyperbolic and condemn protest tactics we might otherwise support were they taken in behalf of ends we endorse.
Criticize the militants’ goals, call for them to disarm, even charge them with criminal trespass and jail them, but let’s avoid overheated rhetoric. We don’t want to see this thing escalate, and we don’t want to see our allies shown the road subject to government overreach.
Hank Kalet 
Bravo, Hank Kalet. This may be the most scrupulously fair and well balanced commentary I've read on this issue.