Right now an estimated 150 men occupy a building at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Harney County, 30 miles South of Burns, Oregon. In defiance of federal authorities, the self described “militia” vows to occupy the building and the land for years to come, and is purportedly prepared to fight to defend it.

The standoff comes as the latest escalation in a decades long conflict between ranchers in the area, and two federal bureaucracies. The Bureau of Land Management, and the US Fish and Wildlife Service have long been buying up land in the area, and becoming increasingly belligerent toward land owners who refused to sell. In 2014 this culminated in an armed standoff between federal authorities and various self described “patriot” groups at a ranch owned by Cliven Bundy, and ended (for the time being) with the retreat of federal agents.

Organized by Cliven Bundy’s son Ammon Bundy, the militiamen claim to stand in defense of the Hammond family – whom the federal government has persecuted for decades over their refusal to sell. The Hammonds have been subjected to perpetual harassment and threats, hundreds of thousands in fines, months in federal prison, and today Dwight & Steven Hammond are expected to turn themselves in to serve a five year minimum sentence over the absurd claim that their efforts to extinguish a fire was terrorism.

The precise details of what led up to the present standoff will be beyond the scope of this post, as they are quite numerous and happened over the course of decades. The Conservative Treehouse has put together an excellent timeline of events for those wishing to have a fuller comprehension of the nature of the conflict, Oath Keepers has also released a statement, and I would encourage everyone to read them. Few seem to truly understand the particularly cruel treatment these fine folks have suffered, or the righteous frustration of the men Twitter liberals have mockingly dubbed #YallQaeda. This is hardly surprising however, since liberals are not known for their capacity to understand complex things.

Suffice to say for our purposes, the federal government is acting as it often does, as a belligerent aggressor operating outside of its purported constitutional boundaries. The entire case stinks of corruption and deceit, and all decent people should be grossly offended by it. I dare say I have a great deal of sympathy for the men who occupy the refuge.

That men would rise in armed rebellion against federal authorities comes to me as neither aberrant nor abhorrent, far from it. The federal government stands guilty of crimes far greater than the one inspiring this particular standoff, and so if there is anything to be said of insurrection, it is only that it is long overdue. I will over the coming paragraphs express some disillusionment with the particular actions of the “militiamen” in question, I will thusly advise against joining them, but this is due in no part to any aversion toward violence. Quite the contrary, I rather find their purported willingness to fight and die, a very hopeful thing indeed.

My objections come merely as a disapproval of resource allocation. If these men are prepared to lay down their lives in a fight against a tyrannical government, I would think it quite the malinvestment to see those lives snuffed out or spent in cages,