Joe Freeman

I was ashamed to see Arizona lawmakers supporting the Nevada rancher (and his armed supporters) who has broken the law and cheated his fellow citizens and taxpayers by refusing over many years to pay his (below-market) grazing fees ("Militias claim victory in cattle dispute," Republic, Tuesday).

The federal government made the modern American West by military conquest (war with Mexico), genocide (against Native American tribes), massive subsidies (to the railroads) and, in the modern era, vast public works projects (the Roosevelt and Hoover Dams come to mind).

All these federal efforts were funded by taxes paid disproportionately by citizens from somewhere other than the sparsely settled West. All Americans, wherever they may live, have a claim, through taxes paid and blood spilled, on Western lands.

The ranchers who graze livestock on public lands today are the beneficiaries of these sacrifices. Grazing fees are legally enacted and legally binding. President George Washington, who came out of military retirement to crush the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794, wrote that if laws are to be "trampled upon with impunity ... and a minority ... is to dictate to the majority, there is an end put, at one stroke, to republican government."

True then, true now.

— Joe Freeman, Paradise Valley



