Outrageous

It's always interesting to see what is coming out of the Montana Stockgrowers convention. They at times have some of the strangest proposals for cattle producers but the one I read about in the paper today takes the cake. "Keeping Montana Montana" was a discussion at the convention that supports the notion that the only way to keep Montana pure is to embrace the concept of wealthy out of state landowners buying up our ranch lands and employing our children to run them. I would like to throw out one word for this position.

FEUDALISM

feudalism - any of various political or social systems similar to medieval feudalism

I will throw out another word for what position they want our children to fufill.

SERF

serf - a member of a servile feudal class bound to the soil and subject to the will of his lord

Now, I admit there is nothing that can be done about the situation.

"In 32 years, I have not seen a ranch that would pay for itself with mother cows," Taylor said. "The value of the land is tied up with a lot of things that have nothing to do with the livestock business."

Ranches today sell for way more than can ever be returned running cattle so it does limit the people that can afford the land and what they are going to do with it. There lately has been some moves at lowering the death tax which might help keep ranches in families there is still a ways to go to completely eliminate it for production agriculture. This keeps the selling pressure up when someone dies and turns more land over to other people. But to embrace the idea that our children are going to be serfs to the overlords of the land is a position I can't endorse and the Stockgrowers even disscusing it is foolish. Maybe they should have had a discussion on how to lobby Congress on eliminating the death tax so that children can keep the ranch in the family. That would be much more productive than advocating a feudal society for our state. How condescending.

You might as well fall flat on your face as lean over too far backward. James Thurber