This land is my land: rebellion in the West

In: Oxford scholarship online

Abstract

This work traces three periods of conservative rebellion against federal land authority over the last 40 years - the Sagebrush Rebellion (1979-1982), the War for the West (1991-2000), and the Patriot Rebellion (2009-2016)-showing how they evolved from a regional rebellion waged by westerners with material interests in federal lands to a national rebellion against the federal administrative state. It explains how Western federal land issues were integrated into national conservative politics, and how federal land issues became inseparably linked to a wide range of constitutional issues, such as freedom of religious expression, private property rights, and gun rights. As a result, federal land issues became flashpoints in conservative status politics and American civil religion, leading to armed standoffs between citizens and federal law enforcement officers in 2014, 2015, and 2016.