The bottom line here is that armed response to supposed grievances is not only criminally stupid, it plays into the hands of whatever power elite you might think is the problem here.
The stupid part is that greedy men with guns wanting more land to make more money with, and whose primary issue seems to be that the Federal Government has no right to own land in the first place, make civil disobedience look like some kind of horrifying act of vigilantism when they move to seize it; and even more so when it is mostly out of a sense of injustice that those who could be making money off it should be allowed to. And by the way, that they should also be able to say fuck taxes of any kind as well.
Lets forget, for the moment, that it was the Federal Government, via outright purchases from other countries quite a ways back, that gave us legal claim to vast stretches of land in the first place. Or that it was Federal troops who took it out right from native Americans via force of arms (depending on your point of view). No, lets just focus on the idea that stewardship of the land has to be guided by criteria other than the commercial gain of a few. There is greater social value in that for so many obvious reasons (water shed protection, soil erosion protection, natural habitat protection, and wild fire prevention, to just name a few), that its a wonder we don't have a law against criminal stupidity in the avoidance of common sense. That other groups with a lot of money can often times skirt the common sense part, and bend Federal Stewardship to their own ends, is another matter entirely, and one that these idiots weren't trying to address at all.
As to the "playing into the hands," part mentioned in the first paragraph, it is also what ought to be common sense, but in this case in the context of what anyone with a legitimate grievance in regards of social justice needs to keep in mind when working for change. If you resort to armed violence you only serve to make it easy for those responsible for the injustice to label you not only just "outlaw," but the far more damning label of "terrorist," and with that amply deserving of whatever harsh counter measures the powerful can muster. Which is, of course, no more than to say what Martin Luther King learned early on from Gandhi; non violent civil disobedience, where you are prepared to take responsibility for breaking a law, until the injustice is rectified, gains you the moral high ground from which the powerful can seldom fight indefinitely from.
I make this post now because anyone who, like myself, is passionate about the need for change, needs to restate this unequivocally, and repeatedly. Don't let your justified passion turn to unjustified violence. We have quite enough of that already in the world and it doesn't help at all.
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