Cliven Bundy
Rand Paul has a notorious fan out west: Cliven Bundy, the deadbeat rancher who held an armed standoff with the federal government when it tried to impound some of the cattle he'd been grazing on federal land without paying fees for years. Rather than being in prison where he belongs, Bundy is out and about attending presidential campaign events,
and showed up at a small Rand Paul question-and-answer session in Nevada on Monday:
Bundy told the AP: "In general, I think we're in tune with each other." He added: "I don't think we need to ask Washington, D.C. for this land. It's our land."
"It's our land." That's a view I'd love to watch Native Americans try to apply in the same heavily armed way Bundy and his supporters did, and see if the government backs down. "It's our land"—what is that? Does Cliven Bundy just get to decide what's his land? In any case, Rand Paul also thinks the federal government should ... get off of federal land, or something:
"I think almost all land use issues and animal issues, endangered species issues, ought to be handled at the state level," he said in an interview with The Associated Press. "I think that the government shouldn't interfere with state decisions, so if a state decides to have medical marijuana or something like that, it should be respected as a state decision."
There's a big jump from medical marijuana to "all land use issues and animal issues." Let's let all the animals go extinct if people like Cliven Bundy would rather graze their cattle in endangered animal habitats! The federal government shouldn't get in the way of that—it should be handled in the way that best suits wealthy deadbeat ranchers, and that's at the state level. Until the states start standing up to people like that, at which point it'll be at the local level.