This Land Is My Land

Take a look at the chapter summaries from This Land Is My Land.

Chapter Summaries

Part I: Three Ranches in Nevada

Part II: The Sagebrush Rebellion

Part III: The War for the West

Part IV: The Patriot Rebellion

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This Land Is My Land traces three periods of conservative rebellion against federal land authority over the last forty years—the Sagebrush Rebellion (1979-1982), the War for the West (1991-2000), and the Patriot Rebellion (2009-2016)—showing how they evolved from a regional rebellion waged by Westerners with material interests in federal lands to a national rebellion against the federal administrative state. It explains how Western federal land issues were integrated into national conservative politics, and how federal land issues became inseparably linked to a wide range of constitutional issues, such as freedom of religious expression, private property rights, and gun rights. As a result, federal land issues became flashpoints in conservative status politics and American civil religion, leading to armed standoffs between citizens and federal law enforcement officers in 2014, 2015, and 2016. These conflicts illustrate both the profound challenges in multiple-use management of federal land and the violent potential in American civil religion.