Dear Editor,
It’s the woke thing to do in Gallup. It’s been 50 years and our local media activists love to portray Larry Casuse as some sort of heroic social justice martyr. Yet what was his cause?
Did he take on the Bureau of Indian Affairs for denying property rights to the Navajos, thus putting them at a huge economic disadvantage? Did he demand economic freedom on the reservation so the citizens might escape unemployment and poverty resulting in despair and substance abuse? Did he speak out against the federal welfare programs which enable the breakdown of tribal families and perpetuate their dependency on government handouts?
Did Casuse protest the demeaning nature of the federal government denying individual and economic freedoms with their claims that Navajos would only abuse and squander their rights? To deny property rights means to turn men into property owned by the state – a plantation rather than reservation. Where is the social justice outrage?
Did Larry Casuse speak truth to power? No, his fight was not with the government forces of bondage but with economic freedom. It was with the private sector’s alcohol industry and the way it “took advantage” of Navajos (who were escaping the oppression and squalor of the reservation).
However, the cost of freedom is responsibility, and the voluntary exchange of free enterprise does not force anybody to purchase their products. When Larry’s demands to close a bar weren’t met, he chose violence. It was a bad choice.
Substance abuse around the world is primarily a product of unemployment, father-absent homes, poverty, and the resulting low self-esteem. Global data also shows that living under communism has a large impact on alcohol consumption and mental illness.
In the U.S. a codependent pathology has been enabled by the perverse incentives of federal welfare programs initiated in the 1960s. Have you noticed how the feds have discouraged employment and productivity since the pandemic? Why work when the government will pay you more to stay home (and drink).
Business owners and staff in Gallup know more than anybody that if you disrespect your customers, you go broke. That’s the way free market capitalism works, but for the government sector it’s another matter. Why is it that federal government entities – the legal guardians of American Indians – freely oppress Navajos while businesses and the City of Gallup take the blame and responsibility for things not of their making?
George Floyd was no champion of justice and neither was Casuse and his misguided cause. Rather than fan the flames of division and encourage race wars our local media and social justice activists might want to take on the real tyrants and bullies, the real enemies of the Navajo – not the white man, City of Gallup, nor private sector, but rather that “diverse, inclusive, and equitable” (Ha!) entity, the BIA.
Our society has become infested with nefarious Marxists virtuously posturing as progressives and social justice warriors. Enough with the fake causes. It’s time for some real warriors to step up in the same way our Founding Fathers did against the oppressive British government.
Isn’t it about time to free the Navajo from their federal plantation masters and expose the media enablers of bondage as well? And why should it take an old antiestablishment white guy to point out the obvious, fer cryin’ out loud.
Sincerely,
Joe Schaller
Gallup, N.M.
