The American Spectator

Reader Mail

Border Showdown

6.1.07 @ 12:01AM

(Page 5 of 5)

A neighbor of ours bought himself a new bull. Normally, on larger ranches you have large sections and you place your bull with your cattle only during the time of breeding. I began to hear allot of carrying on in my back pasture one day. I grabbed my cane and began to walk back over the hill to see what all the commotion was, only to see two bulls going at it. It seemed the Black Brangus of my neighbors decided he wanted a different herd of cows (mine), than the ones he was provided with. Being raised on a ranch, and coming from a family of ranchers, I wisely went home and called my husband! I know better than to try to get between two bulls.

By the time my husband got home the ruckus had stopped. He walked back to see what was happening and found the neighbor's bull dead. It appeared that the neighbor's bull came through the fence to our pasture to get to our cows. He was stopped by our bull and gored. I had never seen that happen in my entire lifetime. I had heard of bull fights and stories of the old bulls of the 1930s from my Dad, but this was a new one for me.

Well, despite our insurance absolving themselves from the loss, (they reasoned, rightly, that the neighbor's bull broke through from his side of the fence provoking the incident!), we found ourselves doing the neighborly thing and giving our neighbor one-half the cost of a new bull. In Texas, and elsewhere, we work to be good neighbors with other ranchers.

Now, in my letter to our President recently, I spoke about ranching and why we fence. I spoke about not desiring to be responsibility for the feeding and medical care of my neighbor's cattle. To me it only seems like common sense to understand the practical and impractical in every situation. And here is where Congress loses out.

Folks talk about Beltway Mentality. I know exactly what that term means, as we lived around the Beltway during my husband's last military assignment. It was awful. The sense everyone had on the Beltway was a superiority that I had never seen before. Each person I met felt more entitled to privilege than the next, and the most peculiar trait each longtime Beltway resident had was the sense that his/her thinking was most superior to everyone else in America. I saw this highlighted daily for four years. It came to its zenith during the Clinton years, as The CLINTONS spoke with cradle to grave authority, as if they knew what was best for us common folk. I found it very insulting.

During the duration of our years of the last military assignment in D.C., I flew home to my Dad's ranch as often as possible to work with my hands and regain a sense of normality. What happens in D.C. is not normal. It is a hyperactive hornet's nest with deals being made by the minute with total disregard of common sense or concern for morality and the national interest. It hasn't changed one bit since we left, only gotten more self centered and further away from how "normal/the rest of America" thinks. Witnessing this stupid debate about immigration only fuels my thoughts that we should only send an elected official to Washington after they have been inoculated against greed, stupidity, and irrelevant thoughts. Then, after one term each official needs to hand over his/her office to another person from the heartland who still possesses common sense.

We have a military fighting for a very real enemy and a country that is falling from within, like Rome in its last days. Sold out by our leaders who vowed to protect and defend, it remains for those possessing the wisdom born from hard work and right thinking, to call out to Washington day by day and remind these folks of their sworn duties. And, I keep inviting them to the ranch where they can see real life....not the Beltway fantasy world, and perhaps they'd understand about bulls, cows, and the need for secure fences!
-- Beverly Gunn
East Texas Rancher
Proud mother of serving pilot

THE CARTER DOCTRINE
Re: Edmund Dantes's letter (under "Light to Touch") in Reader Mail's Tormented Souls:

When the USSR invaded Afghanistan, Carter's retaliated by not sending the U.S.A. Olympic Team to Russia for the Olympics. Wow, talk about taking tough action.
-- Fred Edwards

Letter to the Editor

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