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There is nothing inherently racist about thinking that federal government shouldn’t control nearly 50 percent of the land in Western states. Nor, for that matter, is there anything inherently racist about opposing gun control laws, or wanting to audit the Federal Reserve. But wherever these issues arise, there is invariably a white guy with an American flag and a sidearm that wants to tell you what he knows about “the Negro.” And what could have been a meaningful, important debate about the size and scope of the federal government turns into yet another rant about black people on welfare and open borders. (Curiously, Bundy doesn’t seem have a problem with “Spanish people.”)The conservative push for “state’s rights” and “property rights”—and the more extreme "county supremacy" ideas espoused by Bundy and his ilk—have always been racist dog-whistles, dating back to the fight over slavery, when “property” was code for “enslaved black people,” and leading through the Civil Rights Movement, when opposition to desegregation policies became a cornerstone of the modern conservative movement. While the state’s rights rallying cry has taken different forms over the years, the laws that conservatives have opposed have almost always been related to race.
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