EXTREMISM IN DEFENSE OF FREEBIES IS NO VICE.

When I wrote last weekend about the Bundy Ranch situation -- in which Sagebrush Rebels threatened U.S. federal officers with violence -- I noticed that though conservatives generally applauded the gunmen, the higher-placed ones tried to be cute about it, praising the revolutionary sentiments which they know animate the tricorns-and-treason segment of their base while briefly admitting that Bundy has broken and is flouting the law.

An interesting angle has been to excuse Bundy as a freedom fighter whose duty is higher than legal niceties. National Review's Kevin D. Williamson, for example, compares Bundy to Gandhi and George Washington. I don't remember Gandhi pulling a gun on his enemies, but I fell asleep in the middle of that long Ben Kingsley movie, so maybe I missed that part. As for Washington, I believe he was fighting tyrants to found a nation, to which he colleagues had pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their scared honor, whereas Bundy just wants something for nothing.

Williamson does attach a cause to Bundy's freeloading, suggesting the response should be "legislation that would oblige the federal government to divest itself of 1 percent of its land and other real estate each year for the foreseeable future through an open auction process." So Bundyism in his view is about taking resources that belong to all Americans and giving them to rich people -- that is, traditional conservatism -- and, in lieu of getting enough votes to do it legally, threatening violence -- that is, next-wave conservatism, otherwise known as fascism.

But the best so far is former Republican Senate candidate Alan Keyes:

At the Bundy ranch: A 'Rosa Parks moment'?

Again, I didn't know Rosa Parks refused to pay her bus fare for 20 years and whipped out a gun when challenged, but I'm sure I don't read the same history books as they do.