By Mike Appleton, Guest Blogger
I first heard of John Prather sometime in 1957. We were living outside of La Luz, New Mexico, a village near Alamogordo. My father was working on a guided missile project at Holloman Air Force Base at the time. Prather was a cattle rancher and I followed his story over the next few years with a mixture of boyish awe and admiration.
Prather was born in east Texas in 1873, and moved with his family by covered wagon to New Mexico ten years later. He took up ranching in the 1890s, raising both cattle and mules, supplying the latter to the army during both world wars and acquiring the nickname “Mule King.” By the 1950s, Prather had accumulated 4,000 acres stretching from the foothills and fertile mesas of the Sacramento Mountains into the arid desert of the Tularosa Basin, and held grazing leases from the government on another 20,000 acres. Rough-edged, but gentle, he built his ranch house by hand and grew pecan trees. Prather was one of the last pioneer settlers in New Mexico Territory and looked forward to passing on what he had created to his children. But the government had different ideas.
The Tularosa Basin lies between the San Andres Mountains on the west and the Sacramentos on the east. White Sands runs down the middle of the basin, just south of the prehistoric lava pits known as the Malpais. It is stark, arid, rugged and beautiful. Only a few miles away from the Malpais is the Trinity Site, where the first atomic bomb was detonated on July 16, 1945. In the years following World War II, the White Sands Proving Ground, as it was then known, was gradually expanded. By the early 1950s, America had embarked on the Cold War and the earnest development of guided missile systems. The proving ground was transformed into the White Sands Missile Range, necessitating even further expansion. The nearby McGregor Missile Range was also expanding and by 1956, hundreds of thousands of additional acres of the Tularosa Basin had been set aside for the development and testing of missile systems.
A number of ranchers were affected by the expansion. Most of them negotiated purchase prices with the government and moved on. A few battled condemnation proceedings and eventually settled. And then there was John Prather. He had no desire to sell under any circumstances and made his views clear. When asked about his plans, he replied, “I am going to die at home.” Although he was unwilling to give up his land, he did offer to lease it to the army for $2.00 per year, so that he “could go on raising beef for the army to eat and paying taxes for them generals’ salaries.” But a sale was out of the question. “If they come after me,” he said, “they better bring a box.”
With negotiations going nowhere, the army began formal condemnation proceedings. The U.S. attorney’s office deposited $341,425.00 as compensation for the Prather ranch and the federal court in Albuquerque issued an order of taking requiring him to move his livestock and vacate his ranch by March 30, 1957. When that deadline passed, federal district judge Waldo Rogers issued a writ of assistance on August 6, 1957. Three U.S. marshals were dispatched the next day to serve the writ. Prather still refused to budge and reportedly said, “I will kill the first man that steps into the door of my house.” The army posted the land and sent armed soldiers to convince him to leave, but by this time the affair had attracted widespread media interest. This was, after all, an 82 year-old man standing firmly against the might of the military. The soldiers were withdrawn.
During the course of the next three years, John Prather became an unwilling folk hero. He received a personal visit from the commander of Fort Bliss. The State of New Mexico intervened. Sen. Clinton Anderson publicly denounced the army’s efforts. Congressional hearings were held on the federal “land grab.” And through it all Prather remained, unfazed and adamant. “I never did take to killing, even of animals,” he said. “I figure each time you kill a thing, you take a little joy out of the world. But a man does what he has to, and if he has to kill to protect his ranch and his home …well, that’s his God-given right.”
In the end, John Prather didn’t move. The army agreed to allow him to remain on his ranch and retain fifteen surrounding acres for as long as he lived. When he died in 1965, at the age of 91, his body was buried next to his ranch house. And true to his word, he never accepted the money set aside for his land.
When the controversy erupted over gun control recently, and I listened to the dire predictions of the NRA and the alarmist condemnations from the right, I thought about John Prather for the first time in many years. Throughout his battle with the army, not a single shot was fired. He didn’t barricade himself and amass stores of ammunition. He didn’t attend armed rallies discussing Second Amendment “remedies.” He didn’t hate his government or the soldiers he confronted. He served them coffee and explained his position in simple and direct language. He prevailed because his humility and integrity commanded respect. He understood what “stand your ground” ought to mean. He won by moral force rather than force of arms.
Following Prather’s death, of course, the army took possession of the remainder of his land. And a year later, deciding that not all of the land was immediately needed, it began leasing portions of the Prather ranch-for cattle grazing.
Sources: C.L. Sonnichsen, “Tularosa, Last of the Frontier West,” (University of New Mexico press, 2002); Calvin A. Roberts, “Our New Mexico: A Twentieth Century History,” (University of New Mexico Press, 2005); Marc Simmons, “New Mexico: An Interpretive History,” (W.W. Norton & Company, 1977); John A. Hamilton, “Blazing Skies: Air Defense Artillery on Fort Bliss, Texas, 1940-2009,”(GPO, 2009).
Off topic–but on the subject of guns:
The First 3D-Printed Gun Has Been Fired (VIDEO)
The Huffington Post
By Alexis Kleinman
Posted: 05/06/201
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/06/3d-printed-gun-fired_n_3222669.html
Excerpt:
The world’s first 3D printed gun fired its first shot on Sunday, according to this video released by Defense Distributed, the controversial company pushing for D-I-Y weapons.
Cody Wilson, of Defense Distributed, the company behind The Liberator, told the BBC that he is not concerned with the potential harm the gun could cause. He said, “I recognise the tool might be used to harm other people – that’s what the tool is – it’s a gun. But I don’t think that’s a reason to not do it – or a reason not to put it out there.”
Ruby Ridge. Waco.
Sam, And, “smart” and “wisdom” are often mutually exclusive.
Well, I’m a “troll, dumb, uncaring, liar” give me a break for chrissake.
Sam: I see, you are the final arbiter of what is “smart” and what is not. I presume for you, “smart” means people that agree with you, and anybody that does not is a “complete idiot?”
In the end I don’t think it matters how you define “smart,” the particular definition will vanish in the result; which is that no single number can capture the notion of “smart,” therefore no single person can be the “smartest.” The implication of that is that there is simply a group of people that attain “extreme” smartness; i.e. there is a plateau occupied by the 1% or so that are “as good as humans get” at solving problems, intuiting causes, or inventing things (like a system of government) to address the problems before them.
One way to think of that is to stop thinking in terms of ability, and instead think in terms of deficits. The fewer deficits one has in rationality, comprehension, memory, attention, neural firing rate, connective complexity, etc, the “smarter” one is, but there is a limit there of essentially zero discernible deficits, which many people can be, by the combined influences of genetics and their developmental environment, lucky enough to attain.
Mike A.,
Thank you, I’d never heard of Mr. Prather but surely he was a man worthy of your admiration.
‘Smart’ does not equate to intelligence alone. I know plenty of high iq people who are lawyers or engineers or doctors and some of them are complete idiots.
Nick: I was answering a direct question about my IQ. Perhaps yours is too impaired to grasp that when one is answer the question, “do you think you are as smart as Jefferson,” it is the questioner that has made the topic of IQ fair game, not the respondent.
Bron,
The notion of economic freedom only includes the right to subjugate others to tyranny when it embraces either the extremes of communism, corporatism/fascism or laissez-faire economic models. As has been pointed out numerous times, unregulated capitalism leads to natural monopolies and that natural monopolies have a long track record of being tyrannical in being anti-competitive if nothing else. People should be economically free, but a lack of controls will inherently create an uneven playing field. When those controls themselves become corrupted – as is the case with corporatism/fascism – you get the same problem of an inequitable playing field. Rigged is rigged but when a system is unfair for whatever reason, the strong tyrannize the weak.
Bron: To answer your question more specifically, I think they wanted to achieve the goal they stated: Government of the people, by the people, for the people. Along with some rights (like speech, or a right to a trial, etc) which they regarded at the time as inherent, even against a majority of all-but-one. (Most of us still regard many of the same rights as inherent, but obviously by their rules if enough of us thought differently then the Constitution could be changed to revoke an existing right.)
Nevertheless, their goal was indeed to establish a government that would pass laws and engage in majority rule, or super-majority rule on some issues, while protecting individual rights. The majority of the Constitution is concerned with the machinery of cranking out laws intended to reflect the will of the people in prohibiting certain acts and practices. They did not invent all that with the expectation it would never be used.
Mike A, Good story. Many people who live in the southwest are still like this wise, brave man. They are now disparaged and stereotyped. I’ve spent some time out there the past 5 years, after flying over for decades. I look forward to that trip annually.
Swarthmore,
I guess I am just too emotional.
Bron, Good rule of thumb. When a polemic begins w/ the author talking about their IQ, stop reading.
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-sarah-palin-nras-backward-view-of-guns-politics-of-emotions-20130504,0,168998.story
“The politics of emotion,” Palin said, are governing current attempts to enact common-sense gun restrictions. “It’s not just self-serving, it’s destructive,” she said. “And it must stop.”
It’s apparent that all the NRA speakers this weekend got the same talking point about using the word “emotion” against those who would limit gun rights.
“We must do everything we can to stop violent crime,” said U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas). “Everyone here has been horrified by acts of violence by deranged individuals that would take the lives of the innocent among us. And yet, in terms of how you actually stop violent crime, the president is fond of using emotion, and unfortunately disregarding the facts.”
Yes, emotion. Such a terrible thing. Particularly in the world of NRA leadership, which is known for its dispassionate, intellectual approach to the gun debate. It doesn’t get more lofty than Wayne LaPierre’s post-Sandy Hook analysis: “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”
On Planet NRA, only people who love guns are allowed to act on their emotions. Everybody else, not so much.
“Second Amendment rights are personal to me,” said Palin, who explained that her youngest son’s nickname is “Trigger,” her nephew’s middle name is “Remington,” her oldest son is a combat vet. “I could go on and on about the connections there.”
I bet she could.
However, if your first-grader died in a hail of bullets in the classroom, you, and the president who agrees with you about limits on gun ownership, are expected to shut up and grieve in silence.
You can’t be trusted to understand the gun debate.
You’re too emotional.”
tony c:
I think Jefferson left off action. Pretty convenient for you though, think what ever you please but god dam you are going to do what I [tony c] tell you to do.
Gene H:
I am not sure how economic freedom is tyranny over the mind of man. Economic freedom frees man’s mind to make rational choices not based on tax implications or false signals from bad regulations.
Bron: every form of tyranny over the mind of man.
I am also against “tyranny over the mind of man.” I believe people should be allowed to think what they want, and say what they think, without any tyrant telling them want to believe, what to think, or what to say, or threatening them with retribution for their expressed thoughts or words. I will stand by Jefferson in that statement.
Did Jefferson accomplish that goal? If he did, it was temporary and did not survive until the modern era.
And I agree with the commentators noting that the government’s reaction to Mr. Prather as well as the media’s would be quite different today.
Why is that a broad statement, Bron? Because it interferes with the notion of economic tyranny inherent in the practice of laissez-faire capitalism? The battle against tyranny is the battle against tyranny in all its forms. It’s not ever going to be a destination. It’s a journey.