Congress Can't Stay Silent on the Oregon Standoff
I’ve spent a lot of time this week speaking about the armed militia members refusing to leave Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon. I think this is an important moment for our country, and I’d like to explain why I’m trying so hard to get my colleagues to speak up about it. Bear with me for a minute.
Since the first farmers settled in the Fertile Crescent thousands of years ago, most humans have lived at the mercy of an armed few willing to use force to get what they want. The story of human history is largely about the search for a better way to organize our society. Like most Americans, I feel that our nation’s history is about that search resulting in the success of our democratic experiment.
Democracy’s greatest insight is that popular changes are more sustainable than changes made by force. That insight guides our form of government and our way of life. Our greatest instances of social progress – especially our efforts to build a more just and inclusive vision of who can exercise political power and how major decisions are made – have come about when people from all walks of life came together peacefully to demand change. That’s how great advances are made: not by threats and hostage-taking, but as a response to the peaceful expression of popular will.
The armed militia in Oregon, which too many have dismissed as a handful of cold and hungry dead-enders or a comical sideshow, is alarming. Left unchecked, the political myths and impulses that created this situation undermine our values – not just in Oregon, but across the country.
That’s why, rather than shrugging it off and hoping for the best, I introduced a House resolution on Tuesday calling on the Bundy militia to surrender peacefully to law enforcement and face the legal consequences of their actions. Leader Pelosi and Whip Hoyer have already cosponsored it, and yesterday the three of us put out a joint statement calling on each of our colleagues – no matter their politics – to support it. Dozens of our Democratic colleagues have done so, and more are coming forward with their support every day.
The resolution is not political. It makes no mention of land use policies. I wrote it as an uncontroversial, bipartisan measure supporting the rule of law and decrying the use of force to achieve political ends. No matter how you vote or where you come from, I believe you shouldn’t perpetuate the delusion that these armed militia members somehow represent our truest values or qualify as unsung patriots.
As you know if you’ve followed American political history, there’s a certain strain in our culture – which dates back to our founding and still finds expression in Congress today – that uncritically celebrates the myth of a heavily armed few as our strongest defense against “tyranny.” This myth never comes to grips with the question of what constitutes tyranny, let alone what constitutes legitimate policy, and it certainly doesn’t provide us with a proactive vision of the future. What it does provide is superficial justification for threats and violence.
This myth needs to be identified for what it is by leaders of all stripes until it dies out. Unfortunately, instead of a wave of Republican cosponsors, my resolution has met with silence from across the aisle. One of my colleagues even praised the militia as practicing peaceful “civil disobedience,” as though threatening violence against public officials, while armed, follows in the great tradition of Martin Luther King Jr.
Instead of coming out strongly against the militia’s actions, too many of my House Republican colleagues have dismissed their tactics as relatively unimportant compared to the nefarious intentions of public land managers. My counterpart on the House Natural Resources Committee, Chairman Rob Bishop (R-Utah), blamed Interior Department officials for the entire situation, telling the environmental news serviceGreenwire yesterday, “This did not have to take place. If the Department of Interior was concerned about people instead of dogma this situation would not have occurred.”
The same article quoted my colleague Rep. Greg Walden (R-Oregon), who represents the area, as saying he won’t cosponsor my resolution because “I think the most important thing right now is not to throw gas on the fire.” I believe Rep. Walden is an honorable, fair-minded man, and I said as much in a C-SPAN interview about this situation on Thursday morning. But I do not believe closing our eyes to threats of violence against public servants will make them less likely in the future.
While this episode has an element of farce – the militia members seem willing to sleep in the snow with their rifles even though it’s not clear they really know what they want – there’s a very serious principle at stake. Their behavior wouldn’t suddenly become more appropriate if they published a coherent manifesto. I feel strongly that their armed takeover of public property and their promises to kill or be killed demand a tangible response from our nation’s elected leaders, myself included, and that our silence would only encourage more of the same in the future.
However you want to slice it, an armed minority is making threats and demands and refusing to grant the rest of us access to land we own together. I don’t think that’s an occasion for quiet complicity from Congress, and I hope you don’t either.
By: Raul Grijalva
Source: Daily Kos
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