Since December of 2018, at my home blog, I’ve been writing The Second Civil War series. It’s not a series that hopes for civil strife, but warns against it, and asks what would be the last straw, the final provocation that would force Normal Americans to abandon their lives to fight to preserve our representative republic?

It will not be Normal Americans who spark a second, national conflagration. As Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote:

The most terrifying force of death, comes from the hands of men who wanted to be left alone. They try, so very hard, to mind their own business and provide for themselves and those they love. They resist every impulse to fight back, knowing the forced and permanent change of life that will come from it. They know, that the moment they fight back, their lives as they have lived them, are over.

The moment the men who wanted to be left alone are forced to fight back, it is a form of suicide. They are literally killing off who they used to be. Which is why, when forced to take up violence, these men who wanted to be left alone, fight with unholy vengeance against those who murdered their former lives. They fight with raw hate, and a drive that cannot be fathomed by those who are merely play-acting at politics and terror. TRUE TERROR will arrive at these people’s door, and they will cry, scream and beg for mercy… but it will fall upon the deaf ears of the men who just wanted to be left alone.

Men, and women, like 5^th generation ranchers Heather and Charles Maude of South Dakota,  both indicted for theft of government property, a crime with a 10-year, $250,000 dollar potential sentence.

Graphic: The Maudes. Screenshot from GoFundMe site.

They don’t exactly look the part, do they? What did they do to deserve that? Both hold degrees in animal science with multiple agricultural and business minors. They operate a hog and cattle ranch near Caputa, SD. 

As I reported in The Fence Post Magazine on March 29, Special Agent [Travis] Lunders and U.S. Forest Service Patrol Capt. Jeff Summers appeared at the Maudes’ home and said they had received a complaint from a hunter that a no trespassing sign was posted on a fence that wasn’t built upon the correct boundary. The Maudes removed the sign from the fence, which had been built sometime prior to the 1950s. The family has owned their property adjacent to the U.S. Forest Service-managed Buffalo Gap National Grasslands (BGNG) which is part of the Nebraska National Forests and Grasslands since 1910.

Sometime between 1910 and 1950, William Maude built a levy and a fence, and that fence has served as the physical boundary between the acres owned by the Maudes and the BGNG. That boundary fence and related in holding has been accepted by the USDA annually through the certification of acres by the USDA Farm Service Agency every year since the National Grasslands came into existence in 1960.

Solid citizens, the Maudes met with the district ranger and the overzealous Lunders on May 1. They agreed they’d need a land survey to determine the actual boundary, and District Ranger Julie Wheeler told them the process could take up to a year. In the west, folks are used to dealing with such things reasonably, and the Maudes believed they’d done just that.  Not so Lunders:

Five days later, Special Agent Lunders arrived with a survey crew to complete a survey the Maudes were not a party to. Neither a copy of the survey nor a copy of the original complaint allegedly issued by a hunter has been made available. The federal indictments followed, and it is the first time a husband and wife have been indicted separately in a case like this.

In doing the survey, Lunders trespassed on Maude land, and breached the agreement the Forest Service reached with Wheeler. Who knew the Forest Service had tactical gear, and why would anyone think it necessary to don it, and obtain indictments for people who were willingly participating in an agreed process over a fence they didn’t build?

Congress is now involved, and a Go Fund Me site has been established to help with legal bills.

Throughout the west, government agencies, particularly under Democrat administrations. have long been overbearing and abusive to landowners who have committed no willful crimes. Hopefully, whichever federal judge handles the case will immediately dismiss it, but that’s, sadly, unlikely.

Here we have Charles and Heather Maude. People feeding America and the world. People who just want to be left alone to raise their children and livestock. If government wants to avoid a second civil war, these are the kinds of people, and others who share their values and love of liberty, it had best leave alone.

Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, life-long athlete, firearm instructor, retired police officer and high school and college English teacher. He is a published author and blogger. His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.