This post is going to make some folks uncomfortable, but this is how the founders expected our system of government to work. We have checks and balances, and at a hearing held by the Utah legislature’s Rural Caucus, Piute County Sheriff Marty Gleave took a stand both against Ammon Bundy-style militias, but also against the federal government’s war on rural America.

Sheriff Gleave’s testimony is strong, and shows the right way forward. Not ‘militia’ gangs, but federalism:

I’m not really a big fan of the militia showing up in my county, and I’m not gonna allow that to happen because I got a militia. And it’s that bunch right back there that’s got the cowboy hats on, and every man, woman, and child in my county.

And if the federal government’s gonna… we’re done taking cuts, we’re done having them stomp trample us in the ground, and if we would have had this kind of setting [Rural Caucus], my cattle permit wouldn’t be cut 48%.

So I’m gonna tell you right now. We’re not taking no more cuts on the mountain… I’ll deputize every man, woman, and child in the county to stop what’s going on.

Here’s the video:

Gleave is going to get people wringing their hands about the rule of law, but this is the lawful sheriff, talking to members of his state’s legislature. Nobody who looks at how much land the feds claim in states like Utah can honestly claim this is anything resembling legitimate. The feds got away with these absurd claims when they allowed the people who lived in these states to function on those lands.

Obama’s BLM, like Clinton’s before it, is going to war to try to destroy the livelihoods of these ranchers, and so the states are starting to fight back. This is simply checks and balances at work. This is the system, just as much as it’s the system at work when Colorado decides to stop enforcing federal cannabis laws.

Federalism: like it or not, it’s the law.