THE OREGON STANDOFF REMEMBERED

                    "I love those dear hearts and gentle people who live in my home town because those dear hearts and gentle people will never, ever let you down.  They read the Good Book from Friday till Monday, that's how the weekends go....there's a place I'd like to go and its back in Idaho where your friendly neighbors smile and say hello......"

                                                         Bing Crosby "Dear Hearts and Gentle People"  (1949)

                      Singer Bing Crosby had a ranch in northern Nevada and built a summer home in Idaho and had great affection for the rural Western way of living as expressed in his 1949 recording.

                       It was out of this way of living that  Ammon Bundy came, growing up on his father's Nevada ranch and moving to Idaho;

  

                        Ammon's heart was moved by the plight of ranchers Dwight and Steven Hammond, ordered back to federal prison to serve a mandatory five year sentence as terrorists for lighting a backfire to protect their land in Harney County, Oregon.    Their imprisonment followed many years of federal restrictions on the use of their land for farming and ranching by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).

                       Ammon Bundy was moved to take the action described in the "Good Book" simply as "Love thy Neighbor".

                       And in deciding to occupy the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge one year ago today Ammon Bundy did more than speak the words of God, he took the actions of God.   That's something I find really hard to do because it  involves giving of one's self sacrificially.

                       For Ammon Bundy and others, their actions one year ago would be sacrificial including arrest, imprisonment, trial and for one man, LaVoy Finicum, the ultimate sacrifice.

                       The Oregon Standoff protest leaders did not carry guns at all during the protest (as revealed at the trial where they were acquitted) and Ammon Bundy even referred to Dr. Martin Luther King as an example.   Firearms were around the site of the protest, but only in a Second Amendment self-defense capacity and they ended up never being used by the protestors.

                        Some people who like to show off and shoot off firearms did show up at the protest.   Among them the FBI informants    There were others who had strong political opinions and echoed Republican Party leaders who opposed the protest to begin with.

                         Just like Dr. Martin Luther King would run into opposition from Democrat leadership like John F. Kennedy trying to stop or curtail Civil Rights protests in the early 1960's, the Republican politicos were quick to oppose the Oregon Standoff protest and call for it to be shut down.  All of the Republican presidential candidates called for the protest to end at its beginning.

                         But the protest continued even after the leaders were arrested on January 26th lasting 41 days in the end.

                          A lot has happened in the last year.    From his jail,  Ammon's father  Cliven Bundy endorsed Donald Trump.    The Bundy Family and their supporters hope President Trump will take action to free prisoners and right wrongs that have been done to farmers and ranchers by the federal government through its "Bureau of Land Management" and the rest of the alphabet soup of federal regulatory agencies.