Stupid is as Stupid Does: The Bundy Gang and the Farce of Revisionist History

LaVoy Finicum’s senseless death underscores how greed, absurdity, and blatant stupidity are skewing the essential lessons of American History.   Finicum touted himself as a,  “Cowboy Standing for Freedom,” the Marlboro man riding the range and securing a living from the arid plateaus of the West.  Finicum, a welfare cheat in a saddle, proved to be the opposite, a moronic figure who met his end in a Cascadian version of Pineapple Express.  Trying to escape the law, he plowed his supersized pickup truck into a snow bank, which never happens in truck commercials shilling “the code of the west.”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euFSN7s8FMo With its wheels still spinning, Finicum jumped out of the vehicle yelling, “Shoot me,” and the state troopers obliged. 

Perhaps, Finicum had a death wish. Regrettably, his conception of history did not ride into the sunset as well. The “freedom” Finicum trumpeted is grounded in 19th century laissez-faire nostrums and a theocratic interpretation of a sacred civic document, the Constitution.  His “thought” has more in common with Muhammad Ahmad bin Abd Allah, the tribal leader of the Sudan who claimed to be the “Mahdi” in 1881 and declared holy war on the British.  Of course the occupation of the Harney Wilderness Preserve hardly matched the Mahdi’s successful siege of Khartoum.  In addition, the Mahdiyya army, unlike Bundy’s gang of criminals and malingers, had a historical claim to the land.  Federal ownership of the Harney Wilderness Preserve dates to the territorial period before Oregon was a state (the Paiute Tribe were the previous “land owners”).  The occupation of Harney was a land grab, and layered in the patriotic blather was a desire to profit at the taxpayer’s expense. 

The unfettered use of public land has costs.  That is why the government keeps the likes of Lloyd Finicum and Ammon Bundy (both declared bankruptcy and owe thousands in unpaid fines) from grazing cattle in a manner that will imperil water supplies or degrade the environment.  Regulations are necessary, but government officials are compelled to work with neighboring landowners and private interests.  The new 15-year management plan for the Harney Wilderness Preserve refuge was the product of a successful collaborative approach.   It is not easy, but patience and trust can secure the negotiated “win-win” outcomes that will secure the long-term sustainable use of the land. 

Unfortunately, Filicum and Bundy are not the only ones skewing history to condemn “environmentalism” as an elitist power grab.  Politically correct historians contend there is an “unsavory often hidden history underlying the conservation and environmental movements.” Matthew Kingle is a ringleader of this Neo-Marxist contingent determined to disavow history as well as write it. “Creating usable pasts” is “difficult even dangerous,” he claims in The Emerald City: An Environmental History of Seattle.

“A superb history,” Kingle recommends is a recent book by Portland State professor Catherine McNeur, Taming Manhattan: Environmental Battles in the Antebellum City.  McNeur argues that New York’s precedent plans and laws constituted a zero sum game, “it privileged one group” while “amplifying environmental and economic disparity.” That Ammon Bundy assesses land use controls in a similar vein is why this book is so disquieting.

McNeur vividly recalls the filthiest city in the United States. Hogs rooted in streets layered in garbage, horse manure, and human waste. These foul-smelling creatures plagued New York’s image, but they devoured refuse and were an important food source for their owners, primarily the poor.  The privileged sect wanting the hogs removed were hardly civic-minded, “they were also complaining about the undesirable classes that impinged on their public space.” Mayor Cadwaller Colden’s legal remedy—declaring hogs a nuisance—resulted in “unleashing the authority of the city to limit the hog owners property rights.’”

In the 19^th century, municipalities employed police powers to still nuisances and secure the public welfare. Interestingly, McNeur’s claim of government overreach parallels the plaintiff’s argument in the United States’ precedent takings case, Lucas v South Carolina Coastal Commission (1992).  The Supreme Court cited historic nuisance law in ruling that environmental regulations deprived David Lucas of his property rights.  Lucas became a conservative icon, and his case inspired The Contract with America (which set the agenda for the Republican takeover of Congress) to limit regulations on private property and leash the authority McNeur decried. 

Taming Manhattan also critiques Frederick Law Olmsted, the champion of Central Park. Olmsted believed Central Park would be an antidote to crass materialism, an escape where citizens could re-create themselves and renew their humanity. On its 150th anniversary, Witold Rybczynki echoed this idea. “Without Central Park, New York would risk becoming as callow and mercenary as many of its critics maintain it is.  The park is part of New York's better nature.”[i]  McNeur sees it differently. Olmsted’s monumental achievement was “not a generically benevolent public good.” In fact, she concludes that civic reform itself was a chimera—it “did little to alleviate social tensions. Perhaps the city was never truly tamed at all.”

Ironically, Portland is built on the history McNeur dismisses. After Olmsted died in 1903, John Charles Olmsted and Frederick Law Olmsted Jr., the Olmsted Brothers, moved to build on their father’s legacy and to better serve the public by designing “park systems.” Portland was their test case.  The Olmsted Brother’s Report to the Portland Park Board established the foundation for one of the nation’s greenest cities.  Today its “world class park system reflects John Charles Olmsted’s vision for a comprehensive, interconnected park system writ large," respected activist Mike Houck writes in Planning the Pacific Northwest.

What escapes McNeur is that there is a history to embrace as well as to critique.  Moreover, she is a beneficiary of the history she derides, as the antebellum park (an “exclusive, elite space” in her lexicon) that centers Portland State is one of the city’s most beloved spaces. That Ammon Bundy is incarcerated near Portland State is serendipitous, but Bundy and McNeur are interminably linked.  In denying history’s “better nature,” they impair plans designed to secure a just and sustaining future.  

On the importance of Olmsted's "useable past" seehttps://nextcity.org/daily/entry/orlando-bridge-district-design-planners-nature
I reviewd The Emerald City in the Sepember 2008 issue of the Journal of American History.

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[i] Witold Rybczynki, New York Times. June 22, 2003.