As is almost always the case, the really important point in the Cliven Bundy standoff with the Bureau of Land Management in Nevada is being missed. The point I am referring to is that the federal government has no right to own any land in any state — period.

It is preposterous on its face for a group of men and women, elected to protect the rights (especially property rights) of individual citizens, to declare ownership of more than a quarter of all the land in the United States. Not surprisingly, the government’s land grab is the highest in Nevada, where it claims, like a monarchy, ownership of more than 80 percent of the land.

As I have written about so often in the past, the federal government should be required to sell off at least 95 percent of its land, its vast oil and gas resources, and its thousands of vacant and underutilized buildings.

The oil and gas resources alone are said to be worth $128 trillion, or about seven times the national debt, so paying off the national debt would be a piece of cake. The balance of the money realized from selling off government assets should then be distributed equally among U.S. citizens.

The Bundy-BLM confrontation in Nevada has the potential to be another Waco, to be sure, but it also has the potential of awakening millions of Americans who have been in a long, low-information slumber for decades as the federal government has been slowly tightening the cradle-to-grave serfdom noose around their necks.

It will be interesting to see if this latest government atrocity will be enough to noticeably move the needle on the liberty-tyranny scale. Time is running out. Wake up America!