Lex Anteinternet: Sunday, July 23, 1911. The passing of Scotty Philip.

Lex Anteinternet: Sunday, July 23, 1911. The passing of Scotty Philip.: Scottish born South Dakota rancher James "Scotty" Philip died at age 53.  He is remembered for his personal pioneering efforts to ...

Sunday, July 23, 1911. The passing of Scotty Philip.

Scottish born South Dakota rancher James "Scotty" Philip died at age 53.  He is remembered for his personal pioneering efforts to save the Bison from extinction, his own heard having grown from five to over 1,000 by the time of his death.

Philip was a member of South Dakota's legislature.

Forest Service OKs cattle in Wyoming allotments with history of grizzly conflict

 

Forest Service OKs cattle in Wyoming allotments with history of grizzly conflict

Western stockgrowers cheer loosened grazing regs on public land as feds slash rangeland staff

 

Western stockgrowers cheer loosened grazing regs on public land as feds slash rangeland staff

Trump administration ordered ‘immediate action’ to protect Wyoming woolgrowers’ lambs from golden eagles

 

Trump administration ordered ‘immediate action’ to protect Wyoming woolgrowers’ lambs from golden eagles

Lex Anteinternet: The 2026 Election, 10th Edition. The Setting the s...

Lex Anteinternet: The 2026 Election, 10th Edition. The Setting the s...:   We start off this edition with what might be a little light at the end of a tunnel: GOP Senate Challengers Emerge To Take On Harriet Hagem...

April 30, 2026

Protect Wyoming ran an ad this morning in the Tribune against Bill Allemand.

Hunters and fishermen should really oppose Allemand, who following the corner crossing ruling of the Federal Court sponsored a Draconian bill on hunting trespassing.   While he claims no present interest in it, he's from a well known Powder River Basin Wyoming ranching family, a region of the state that features very limited land access.  He's fighting a charge for drunk driving in Johnson County presently.

He's being challenged by Bar Nunn Mayor Peter Boyer, who got cross wise in a Bar Nunn town council meeting according to news reports.  Allemand quixotically adamantly opposed a proposed nuclear generator project north of the small Natrona County Casper bedroom community.  The WFC seemed to align with that opposition, showing it thinks so little that its only concept of the energy industry is grounded in fossil fuels.

Democrat Keenan Morgan is also running against Allemand.  Morgan and Boyer are from Bar Nunn, Allemand from Midwest.  The district covers a large amount of territory but uniquely features three small towns, Midwest, Edgerton and Bar Nunn, with Bar Nunn being by far the largest of the three.  House District 58 also includes a sliver of Casper and the large unincorporated area north of Highway 20/26 in Natrona County.

It'll be interesting to see how Allemand, who has a semi uncontrollable temper, reacts Protect Wyoming's advertisement.

Lex Anteinternet: Kill and eat. The deeply unnatural, and rather odd...

This is an old thread on Lex Anteinternet which is suddenly getting a lot of views. 

Lex Anteinternet: Kill and eat. The deeply unnatural, and rather odd...: I suppose its indicative or our general desire to be polite, even in print while commenting, but rarely does anyone bother to take on the...

I don't know if its every been posted here.  It may have been.  It's certainly relevant to this blog, so we are now.

  

Kill and eat. The deeply unnatural, and rather odd, nature of vegetarianism.

I suppose its indicative or our general desire to be polite, even in print while commenting, but rarely does anyone bother to take on the topic of vegetarianism, how rare it is in the historic examples in the true sense, and how unnatural it is.

 Bean field, New Jersey.  Only in a society with highly developed row crop agriculture is an unnatural diet like vegetarianism possible.

But every now and then, it's worth noting something like this, particularly when those advocating a certain position have become so irrational and aggressive about their position, as vegetarians and their extremist adherents, vegans, have become.  Indeed, I suppose it might be further indicative that we have arrived at this point in that not only I'm now commenting on it, but Stephen Pastis, who previously limited his satiric wit in a class sense to fanatic bicyclist, has now added an equally fanatic irritating character to poke fun at, that being a vegan.

So, let's start with a simple set of truths.

First of all, vegetarianism in any form is a deeply unnatural diet. Human beings aren't designed to eat a strictly vegetable diet, and those who do are engaging in a deeply unnatural act.

Secondly, only in very advanced societies where a human's protein requirements can be made up in other ways, with considerable effort on the part of the eater, or on the part of society at large, can such a diet even be contemplated.

Thirdly, there aren't any well established religions of any antiquity, anywhere, which hold to the concept that a vegetarian diet is somehow morally superior to a diet featuring meat.  And to suggest it comports with Christianity is just fooling yourself in the extreme.

Oh, I know that vegetarians are now rolling in their tofu in anger, but these are the simple facts. And, if arguments work the way they usually do, anyone contesting these simple facts is busy building a straw man to argue against, raising arguments to defeat that I haven't brought up.

No, I'm going with history and nature on this one, and frankly any rational eater ought to as well.

And before I go on to state those facts in greater detail, let me add one more thing.

Everything, and everybody, dies.  You will dear reader, and so will I.  That's obvious, but as with much in contemporary Western society, we're busy ignoring that, and that figures into this topic. In our contemporary society, much effort is expended by many trying to fool ourselves that death is unnatural and can be wholly avoided.  It can't be, and for each of us, it won't be.

The diet a human being is evolved to eat is phenomenally well established.  Indeed, a recent National Geographic article detailed it well.  In a state of nature, human's eat meat, and crave it.

Now, in a state of nature, they also hunt it.  Before any person tries to qualify this by noting that they restrict their meat intake to fish alone, and they are therefore somehow superior, fishing is merely fish hunting.  The only distinction between fishing and hunting is that we've named it differently if it regards fish.  Not that this is wholly unique to fishing, students of language will note that taking frogs is sometimes referred to frogging or frog gigging, and hunters of waterfowl are sometimes claimed to engage in waterfowling, or just fowling.

 Antelope hunter, 19th Century Wyoming. Antelope hunting, including what amounts to a type of subsistence hunting, is very common in Wyoming to this day and very lean antelope makes a dinner entry on a lot of regional tables.  In  terms of what you're evolved to eat, this is it.

And in a state of nature, that's what people eat, and how they get it.  Animals, birds and fish.

 Trout hunters, i.e., trout fisherman, Colorado high country 1946. With such an nice looking stream such as this, why does every single Colorado fisherman seem to be fishing in Wyoming?  Also, given as trout fishing is trout hunting, isn't there something a little weird about "catch and release". We fish to eat, after all.

Now, for the most part, in any such society, people still eat more vegetable matter than meat, and for some simple reasons. One is that we're evolved to eat that as well, not exclusively, but in addition. Secondly, getting meat is pretty tough work, even where its plentiful, and even today when hunted.  Calories are expended getting it, as well as time. So, it's quite true that even in hunting societies, of any type, more vegetative matter is eaten than meat.  It's also true that in such societies meat is strongly craved, and vegetative food often disdained, but they are both consumed, with considerably more plant life consumed than meat.

Elk hunters, 19th Century. This hunters work has only just begun, given that he has a bull in the woods.

That's the basic human diet and the only natural one.  A person can try to theorize their way around it, but that is it. That's the scientific, biologic, and historic fact. And that's what your body wants to eat.

Now, the only reason that anyone eats in any different fashion is due to agriculture, and agriculture alone. The irony of that is that it really take fairly advanced, if not fully modern, production agriculture to eat in any other fashion, and its of note that generally farmers, who are pretty attuned to nature, aren't vegetarians.  Only the very modern production agriculture we have in the Western world can allow something like veganism to exist.

 Farmer, late 1930s.  This farmer, engaged in a pretty natural act with animal assistance, is doing something that early agriculturalist would have recognized.  With this heavy labor, he also was certainly not a vegetarian.

The reason for that is that is is only through production agriculture can sufficient protein supplying crops be grown in order to allow for such diets to exist in society. And because of that, ironically, vegetarianism in any form actually cuts not only against the natural order, but it actually destroys it.

Now, I don't mean to dump on farmers here, and indeed I'm a species of farmer myself. But the plant life that has sufficient protein in order to substitute for animal life is crop agriculture, not grass, and that means that it has to be put in, and it supplants, more natural crops. That's neither good nor bad, in a moral sense, it just is. But as something that is, a person should be aware of it. And the irony of any type of crop farming is that when it becomes intensive, like row crop agriculture of any kind, it involves the killing of animals, which farmers well know and accept.  It isn't possible to plow, plant or harvest without killing something, and it further isn't possible to get any crop to market without something also being killed occasionally in the process.  And it involves the supplanting of animals from their preexisting habitat.  Deer and elk don't naturally occur in soybean fields. So, vegans, you're killing, by proxy, and driving things off their habitat. And that is just as true if you go all organic and free trade as if you do not.  And, as you are basing your entire diet on crop agriculture, you are actually more destructive in a way, as people who obtain protein from meat at least can obtain that from meat that came from an animal that lived in a fairly natural way, and which didn't destroy its econiche.  Indeed, some forms of meat, which come in for frequent attacks form those who are ignorant of the realities, comes from animals that can live and usually do live pretty close to their natural state. Beef is the best example, in domestic animals, as they're a large ungulate and large ungulates usually just hand around eating grass, which is what beef cattle pretty much do for most of their lives.

Of course, you can also hunt for your mean, in part or whole, which not only doesn't impact wildlands, but which has been demonstrated to be their most effective protector.  Its hunters who have been the main drivers for the protection of any type of wildland, followed, in the United States, by ranchers who require what most people would regard as wiildlands, even if they don't, large acreages for grazing.

Moreover, the natural diet is the one that's best for you.  That's the one you are evolved to eat.

Now, note here I didn't say that the contemporary fast food American diet is best for you. That wouldn't be true at all. And I'm not saying any diet that incorporates meat is ipso facto a good one for you.  Any diet that departs from a natural one, and that includes the one you get at the burger joint and the one you get at the vegan cafe, can be harmful.  So, a person who is sitting there eating the all meat and cheese pizza or the Double Triple Burger Supreme can't take comfort at this either.  Ideally, you ought to be eating meat that's pretty lean in proportion to a reasonable percentage of vegetables. Better yet, you ought to participate in getting that meat yourself in some fashion, in part if not in whole.

But let's bring up another point here before its missed, which is the simple one that either way look at it, you're going to die anyway.  Oh yes, that again.

There seems to be a general belief in western society now that if you eat the correct odd diet, no matter how far from nature it may be, get the same holistic philosophy that some actor advances, or take the right pills, you're going to live on forever. Well, you aren't.

Eating a sane diet may extend your life, that's for sure, just as eating an unhealthy one may shorten it.  Or more accurately, a sane diet may help keep you from dieing prematurely, maybe. Getting exercise, not smoking, not drinking too much, proper medicine, and avoiding excessive stress also all contribute to that. But anyway you look at it, you are going to pass on, and imagining that if you pass up on the roast beef, or even the hamburger, avoid the offered glass of beer, and just suck down some concoction called a "smoothie" that has the consistency of pooh will make you live forever is delusional.  Just something people should keep in mind, before going whole hog into some peculiar philosophy of diet.  Make yourself miserable if you want to, but the grim reaper is going to stop by anyhow.  Of course, don't invite him early by your conduct either.

On this, by the way, as the boosters of vegetarianism are fond of citing examples of somebody they claim to be vegetarians (although those examples aren't always so clear, and omit some interesting examples of clearly vegetarian historic figures, like Adolf Hitler*) consider that Chief Washakie, the most significant figure of the Shoshone in the 19th Century, lived to be 101 years old, and he definitely wasn't a vegetarian.  He's not the only Native American figure of that period to live to that age either.  That would suggest an outdoor life, getting plenty of exercise, might be the real key to having a long life, outside of course of fortunate genetics.

 

Monument to famous centenarian and meat eater, Chief Washakie, in Laramie Wyoming.

Now, having already noted that if you are a vegetarian or a vegan, you're participating whole scale in killing animals, let's also note that vegetarians have no claim to moral or religious superiority, and these positions are not in keeping with any accepted religious or moral position of antiquity.  We've already basically disposed of the moral superiority claim, but to restate it, if you are a vegan or vegetarian, you're relying whole scale on a row crop system of agriculture that depends on fairly destructive farming practices combined with international transportation, both of which kill things right and left.  Relying on killing by proxy is, if anything, dishonest and less philosophically sound than accepting that the killing occurs.  The only intellectually honest approach is to do some of it  yourself for your diet.

And no pre modern religion every held to vegetarianism.

Hinduism, which is sometimes cited in these regards, does not, or at least the majority of Hindus are not in sects which require vegetarianism. We've already addressed this in the thread on myths, but the vast majority of Hindus do in fact eat meat. The Dali Lama eats meat.  And while I'm not an expert on Hinduism, as with Christianity, we need to be careful to distinguish a discipline from a religious tenant.  Now, it is true that a minority of Hindus, for some reason, are vegetarians, but the percentage of them that are is a minority percentage, and I don't know the origin of their practice. That most Hindus do eat meat, but have dietary practices that restrict the intake of some forms of meat, seems to be wholly lost in the west. But then the nature of Central Asian religions, such as Hinduism and its reform, Buddhism, seem to be nearly completely lost on westerns in general, including those who claim to embrace those religions.**

Indeed, while I can already sense the hackles on this being raised, let's be blunt about the major Monotheistic religions. None of them, none whatsoever, have any religious tenant that supports even vaguely vegetarianism.***  Indeed, the contrary would be quite true.

Judaism certainly does not.  Indeed, we learn from the Old Testament that Issac sent Esau "out into the field to hunt game for me and make me savory meat."  Genesis Chapter 27.  And we know further that God instructed Moses to have lambs slaughtered for the first Passover, with the blood placed on the door mantels so that the Angel of Death would pass those house holds over.  I have no doubt that there are vegetarian Jews today, but there's no support for that practice in the texts of the religion itself.

Indeed Jesus, who of course was a Jew, also wasn't a vegetarian (as indeed nobody in that region of the world would have been, and indeed hardly anyone on earth would have been).  Jesus called more than one fisherman to his discipleship and, as already explored, the fish they were taking were killed and eaten.  And Jesus undoubtedly ate more than one Passover meal, a feature of which, from the very first Passover, is lamb.  At the Last Supper, lamb was undoubtedly consumed.

Indeed, given this, it's really odd that some contemporary Christians will cite their Christianity as a basis for their vegetarianism. When they do so, they're largely just flat out rationalizing a practice that has no basis in Christian theology at all. Some will point towards certain historic Christian figures or communities, but when they do so, they fail to understand that its largely the case that those examples had that practice as a discipline, rather than a doctrine. That is, these examples largely gave up eating meat as a sacrifice for their Faith, and therefore they didn't give it up because God had implicitly prohibited eating meat, but rather he'd allowed.  In this sense, this example is not only poorly understood by those who cited it, but if the example of the same people is to be followed, there's a lot of other things that would likewise be given up, one of which is the blaring headline on nearly every magazine a person has the misfortune to observe in the grocery store line.  Funny, indeed, that a practice that was one of discipline by select groups who abstained from other things that our society loudly proclaims as necessary would be cited here, or that a practice which every Catholic and Orthodox faithful still practices at least during the Friday's of lent would be so misunderstood.

 Orthodox monk.  Some, but certainly not all, monks in various monastic orders observe meatless regulations.  Of course, they also fast as well, and fasting and abstaining from meat on certain days are features of Catholic and Orthodox faiths for reasons that have nothing to do with diet whatsoever.

And misunderstood indeed is the Christian relationship to food in this context.  Not only is there no proclamation in the New Testament against eating meat, Christians were given license in the New Testament to eat meats that Jews had heretofore not been allowed to.

On the next day, as they were on their way and approaching the city, Peter went up on the housetop about the sixth hour to pray. But he became hungry and was desiring to eat; but while they were making preparations, he fell into a trance; and he saw the sky opened up, and an object like a great sheet coming down, lowered by four corners to the ground, and there were in it all kinds of four-footed animals and crawling creatures of the earth and birds of the air. A voice came to him, “Get up, Peter, kill and eat!”

Kill and eat.  Not even close to what those who imagine themselves to be following in terms of Christianity in the context of vegetarianism, like to cite.

And of course Moslems also  have a history of eating meat.  I'm much less familiar with the tenants of Islam in this context, but basically Islamic practices and laws concerning diet are fairly similar to Jewish ones, with the addition that Moslems are not supposed to drink alcohol.  Like the Jews, Moslems have a least one yearly observance with requires the slaughtering of a lamb, so the religion doesn't square with vegetarianism at all. However, being a faith that's much more centered in the non Westernized regions of the globe up until very recently, I also do not think I've ever heard anyone claim to be a Moslem vegetarian either.

Okay, so where does this take us, where, to here.

Well for one thing, the fact that there are so many vegetarians and even vegans says something about our society and the the times we live in, and not in a good way, for the most part. Societies that live close to nature live close to reality, and that a lot of people are electing for this deeply unnatural, and even anti-natural, diet shows how far from a sense of reality we now live. That a lot of these same people are very well meaning and also deeply believe that their acting in accordance with nature, or in accordance with some species of philosophical high mindedness, shows how badly we now fail to understand basic nature and have even a remote grasp on philosophical matters.  This doesn't mean that these people are "bad" people, but it does mean that a huge number of these people are acting in accordance with a set of beliefs that can only exist if a person has very little exposure to the natural order and even a misconstruction of it, with some certain exceptions existing for people who have taken this up for other thought out reasons.

Additionally, a set of summations about this can be made, those being:

1. Be a vegetarian if you wish, but don't fool yourself that its an ethically superior choice, or an environmentally benign one.  It's neither, save for the sole example of somebody giving up meat as a species of intentional moral self sacrifice, which is very rare in this day and age. But even at that, unless that sacrifice is based in religion, it isn't really going towards any point.

2.  Don't fool yourself that its the healthiest choice going.  Reason would stand to dictate that the diet you should eat is the one you are evolved to eat, and that's not a vegetarian diet by any stretch of the imagination. Don't make false comparisons here either, and note that a diet of Big Macs isn't good for you.  Of course it isn't, but two unnatural choices doesn't mean that those are the only choices that exist.

3.  Let's not pretend that its the "natural" diet, that's a western world hallucination only capable of being believed in a highly industrialized society that can supply protein in some other fashion.  Nowhere else is that fantasy believed and its scientifically invalid.

4.  Don't argue that its religiously mandated by religions of antiquity, that just isn't so and any argument to that effect is demonstrably false.

Does this mean you shouldn't be a vegetarian? Well, frankly it does.  As a diet its not supported by our evolution and that pretty much means you're having to make huge adjustments somewhere. Does that mean you ought to eat bacon burgers three times a day?  Of course not, that's not supported by our evolution either.  It does mean that the folks in the western world who take some of their own meat in the field or streams, and there are those who take all of their meat that way, are dieting closest to what nature would have for us, but it otherwise means that a person ought to simply use their heads a bit and not buy into dietary fantasy, something that's particularly common in our flighty and overweight society.  Perhaps it would be simply best if people bought a fly rod or a shotgun and headed out to the field every now and then.

__________________________________________________________________________________

*One of the most amusing, or maddening, arguments made by vegetarians is that every single historical figure of consequence was a vegetarian.  This sort of argument is actually common for any sort of social movement, which is what vegetarianism really is, and they all tend to go back towards figures of antiquity on occasion as the further back you go, the more difficult any assertion you might make is to disprove.  Rarely are the claims for any one person analyzed in depth.  For example, I've seen it cited for Benjamin Franklin, but its rarely noted that he switched back and forth on his diet over time making him inconsistent in these regards, and as brilliant of man as he was, he also had other practices most of us wouldn't feel that we were compelled to take up.  And in this instance, the most famous of all modern vegetarians, the gassy murderous Adolph Hitler, is always omitted, which he should not be as, after all, he's a really well known example whose habits are very well known.

**Most westerners have real misunderstanding of religions of the East and frequently misunderstand their basic tenants. For one thing, a lot of westerners don't grasp that monotheistic religions are as common in the East as any others and that a person can't really discuss Eastern religions without including them. For example, there are Catholic populations in Indian that date to the Apostolic age and Christians are quite numerous in South Korea and China, and of course the Philippines, where they are the majority.  Islam is a major Asian religion in China, Central Asia, Indonesia, the Philippines and parts of Southeast Asia.  Animist religions, based on the worship of departed souls, is common in much of China and Korea, and retains a following in Japan.  In Korea, Japan and China, that type of devotion far exceeds the number of people who adhere to Buddhism and none of those countries can be regarded as "Buddhist".  Buddhism itself, being sort of a philosophy in certain ways, sometimes accommodates itself to other native religions so that there are people who combine an animist religion with it.   The mainland Southeast Asian countries are, or were, Buddhist, but all of them have had significant Christian or Moslem minorities for a very long time.  The nature and practice of Buddhism itself is often quite misunderstood in the west, and its rarely grasped that it was a reform of Hinduism.

***I do realize in typing this out that there are some contemporary Monotheistic religions that hold to vegetarianism as part of their beliefs, but none of them date to antiquity.  Some that are sometimes cited as being vegetarians are, additionally, not although some of their members may be as a form of observance, which is once again different from the practice being a tenant of their Faith.

Labels: Agrarianism, Agriculture, Commentary, fishing, Food, Friday Farming, hunting, mehr Mensch sein, religion

Oregon Animal Rights Activists Push To Basically Ban Hunting, Fishing, Ranching

 

Oregon Animal Rights Activists Push To Basically Ban Hunting, Fishing, Ranching

The Agrarian's Lament: What have you done for me lately? Addressing politicians in desperate times, part 5.

The Agrarian's Lament: What have you done for me lately? Addressing polit...: An agricultural country which consumes its own food is a finer thing than an industrial country, which at best can only consume its own smok...

What have you done for me lately? Addressing politicians in desperate times, part 5.

An agricultural country which consumes its own food is a finer thing than an industrial country, which at best can only consume its own smoke.

Chesterton.

A long time ago I started a post on one of our companion blogs about agriculturalist and the Republican Party.  I can't find it now, maybe I published it, or maybe I didn't.

As I"m in both worlds, the urban and the agricultural, I get exposed to the political views of both camps.  The Trump administration has made this a really interesting, and horrifying, experience.  By and large professionals detest Donald Trump and regard him as a charleton  Farmers and ranchers are, however, amongst his most loyal base, even though there's no real reason for them to be such.  Indeed, with the damage that Trump is doing to agriculture this will be a real test of whether farmers and ranchers simply reflexively vote Republican or stop doing son and wake up.

The Democratic Party, not the GOP, saved family farmers and ranchers in this country when the forces of the unabated Homestead ACt and the Great Depression were going to destroy them.  They've seemingly resented being saved from those forces, however, as an impingement on their freedoms, and they've bristled at every government act since that time.  Farmers and ranchers would rather sink in a cesspool of their own making than be told how to properly build one, basically.

We here, of course, aren't a pure agricultural blog.  This is an Agrarian blog, and that's different.  We are, quite frankly, much more radical.

"The land belongs to those who work it." 

Zapata.

Agrarianism is an ethical perspective that privileges an agriculturally oriented political economy. At its most concise, agrarianism is “the idea that agriculture and those whose occupation involves agriculture are especially important and valuable elements of society

Bradley M. Jones, American Agrarianism.

Still, we can't help but notice that American agriculturalist, more than any other class of businessmen, have voted to screw themselves by voting for Donald Trump. They voted for tariff wars that leave their products marooned here in the US while foreign competitors take advantage of that fact.  They've voted for a guy who thinks global warming is a fib (which many of them do as well) in spite of the plain evidence before their eyes, and the fact that this will destroy the livelihoods of the younger ones.  They've voted to force economic conditions that will force them off the lands and their lands into the hands of the wealthy.

Indeed, on that last item, they've voted for people who share nothing in common with them whatsoever and would just as soon see them out of business, or simply don't care what happens to them.

They've voted, frankly, stupidly.

Well, nothing cures stupidly more than a giant dope slap from life, and they're getting one right now.  The question is whether they'll vote in 2026 and 2028 to be bent over, or start to ask some questions.

We're going to post those questions here.

1.  What connection does the candidate have with agriculture?

They might not have any and still be a good candidate, but if they're running around in a plaid shirt pretending to be a 19th Century man of the soil, they should be dropped.

They should also be dropped if they're like Scott Bessent, who pretends to be a soybean farmer when he's actually a major league investor.  Indeed, big money is the enemy of agriculture and always has been.  

I'd also note that refugees from agriculture should be suspect.  The law is full of them, people who were sent off to law school by their farmer and rancher parents who believed, and in their heart of hearts still believe, that lawyers, doctors and dentist, indeed everyone in town, don't really work.  All of these refugees live sad lives, but some of them spend time in their sad lives on political crusades that are sort of a cry out to their parents "please love me".

I know that sounds radical, but it's true.

2. What will they do to keep agricultural lands in family hands, and out of absentee landlord hands?

And the answer better not be a "well I'm concerned about that". The answer needs to be real.

From an agrarian prospective, no solution that isn't a massive trend reversing one makes for a satisfactory answer to this question. Ranches being bought up by the extremely wealthy are destroying the ability of regular people to even dare to hope to be in agriculture.  This can be reversed, and it should be, but simply being "concerned" won't do it.

3.  What is your view on public lands?

If the answer involves transferring them out of public hand, it indicates a love of money that's ultimately always destructive to agriculture in the end.

Indeed, in agricultural camps there remains an unabated lust for the public lands even though transferring them into private hands, whether directly or as a brief stop over in state hands, would utterly destroy nearly ever farm and ranch in local and family ownership . The change in value of the operations would be unsustainable, and things would be sold rapidly.

Public lands need to stay in public hands.

4. How do you make your money?

People think nothing of asking farmers "how many acres do you have" or ranchers "how many cattle do you have", both of which is the same as asking "how much money do you have".  

Knowing how politicians make their money is a critical thing to know.  No farmer or rancher, for example, has anything in common with how the Trump family makes money, and there's no reason to suppose that they view land as anything other than to be forced into developers hands and sold.

5. What is your position on global warming?

If its any variety of "global warming is a fib", they don't deserve a vote.

6.  What is your position on a land ethnic?

If they don't know what that means, they don't deserve a vote.

7.  What's on your dinner table, and who prepares it?

That may sound really odd, and we don't mean for it to be a judgment on what people eat. . . sort of.  But all agriculturalist are producing food for the table. . . for the most part, if we ignore crops like cotton, or other agricultural derived textiles, of which there are a bunch, and if we ignore products like ethanol.

Anyhow, I'll be frank.  If a guy is touring cattle country and gives an uneasy chuckle and says, "well, I don't eat much meat anymore" do you suppose he really cares about ranching?  If you do, you need your head checked.

You probably really need it checked if the candidate doesn't every grill their own steak but has some sort of professional prepare their dinner every night.  That would mean that they really have very little chance of grasping 

8.  What's your understanding of local agriculture?

That's a pretty broad question, but I'm defining agriculture very broadly here.  Indeed, what I mean is the candidates understanding of the local use of nature, to include farming and ranching, but to also include hunting, fishing and commercial fishing.

Indeed, on the latter, only the commercial fishing industry seems to have politicians that really truly care what happens to them. How that happened isn't clear, but it does seem to be the case.

Otherwise, what most politicians seem to think is that farmers wear plaid flannel shirts.  I see lots of them wondering around in photographs looking at corrals, or oil platforms, but I never see one actually do any work. . . of pretty much any kind.  That is, I don't expect to see Chuck Gray flaking a calf, for example.

Last and prior editions:

Claiming the mantle of Christ in politics. Don't support liars and don't lie. Addressing politicians in desperate times, part 4.

Claiming the mantle of Christ in politics. Addressing politicians in desperate times, part 3.

Questions hunters, fishermen, and public lands users need to ask political candidates. Addressing politicians in desperate times, part 2.

Labels: 2026 Election, 2028 Election, Commentary, Democratic Party, Politics, Questions for politicians, Republican Party, Trailing threadLabels: 2026 Election, 2028 Election, Camping, Climate Change, fishing, hunting, Politics, Public Lands, Questions for politicians, Right Wing Politics and Politicians, The Land Ethic, This is why we can't have nice things

Addressing politicians in desperate times. A series.

Labels: 2026 Election, 2028 Election, Commentary, Democratic Party, Politics, Questions for politicians, Republican Party, Trailing thread

The Agrarian's Lament: Rejecting Avarice. Some radical rethinking.

The Agrarian's Lament: Rejecting Avarice. Some radical rethinking.: Cease being intimidated by the argument that a right action is impossible because it does not yield maximum profits, or that a wrong action ...

Rejecting Avarice. Some radical rethinking.

Cease being intimidated by the argument that a right action is impossible because it does not yield maximum profits, or that a wrong action is to be condoned because it pays.

Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac

We just published this item here on Donald Trump's insatiable lust for the destruction of land, lands even beyond our borders.

The Agrarian's Lament: Lex Anteinternet: Manifest Destiny and the Second ...: Lex Anteinternet: Manifest Destiny and the Second Trump Administrati... : Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way, dramatizing Manifest ...

In the movie The Patriot, which is okay but not great, commences with these lines:

I have long feared, that my sins would return to visit me, and the cost is more than I can bare.

In a lot of ways, that opening scene is the best one in the movie.

No nation has a singular linear history, even though people tend to hear things that way. "This happened, and then that happened, resulting in this. . . ".  In reality, things are mixed quite often, and things are quite fluid with juxtapositions.  

Shakespeare claimed:

“There is a tide in the affairs of men

Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;

Omitted, all the voyage of their life

Is bound in shallows and in miseries.

On such a full sea are we now afloat;

And we must take the current when it serves,

Or lose our ventures.”

Perhaps.  But in reality the tide in the affairs of men drags everyone along with it. But it's a rip tide.  People's individual goals, desires and aspirations often are quite contrary to the tide on the surface.

That's certainly been the case with the United States.

If you have a Trumpian view of the world, the history of the United States looks like this, sort of:

This again.  It never occurs to many that the mines and cities aren't really everyone's dream.  It particularly doesn't occur to a rich real estate developer who isn't smart and whose values are shallow.

Lots of people have that view.  We came, we saw, we exploited, and everyone got happy working for Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk.

Trouble is, that's not true for a lot of reasons, a core one being it doesn't comport with who we really are.  The entire worship of wealth and what it brings, and the wealthy and who they are, is deeply contrary to our natures, and frankly men like Jeff Bezos, Donald Trump, and Elon Musk are deeply perverted.  Not because of their relationship with women, or because their names appear in the Epstein files in some context, although in the case of Trump, we really still don't know what context, but because of their shallow avaricious acquisition for and desire for wealth.

Timothy warns us:

Those who want to be rich are falling into temptation and into a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires, which plunge them into ruin and destruction.  For the love of money is the root of all evils, and some people in their desire for it have strayed from the faith and have pierced themselves with many pains.

And not only have their pierced themselves, but they pierce others, and entire societies with them.

So let's look at a few concrete things that we feel should be done.

Among the rich you will never find a really generous man even by accident. They may give their money away, but they will never give themselves away; they are egotistic, secretive, dry as old bones. To be smart enough to get all that money you must be dull enough to want it.

G.K. Chesterton, A Miscellany of Men

Revisit the Homestead Act.

Right from the onset of English colonization of North America, there was a pull between business exploitation and the simple desire for an agrarian place of one's own.

The truth of the matter is that when the nation started off, most people weren't "Pilgrims" seeking shelter from religious oppression.  Nor did they wish to be servants of big mercantile enterprises.  Most of the early English colonists were from agriculture or the trades and wanted to just work for themselves.  That's about it. 

The American Revolution was as much about that as anything else.  When American Colonials dumped tea in harbors, they were protesting taxes, but what they were also doing is dumping mercantile controlled property into waste.  It was grown somewhere else and it belong to rich remote classes.

The struggle was always there. The American South in particular had the planter class which depended upon enslaved labor to raise a market crop.  That was about generating wealth.  Most Southerners, in contrast, were Yeoman who had small places of their own.  When the Civil War came the wealthy had the South fight the war.

The analogies to the present day are simply to thick to ignore.

The Homestead Act came about during that war, and in real ways, it expressed a Jeffersonian dream. People willing to invest their own labor could acquire a place of their own.

The drafters of the Act never envisioned the wealthy controlling the land.  In some very real ways it was wealthy landowners that the North was fighting at the time.

Over the last few days residents of Wyoming have read about Chris Robinson, CEO of Salt Lake City-based Ensign Group, L.C., buying the Pathfinder Ranch.  I have nothing about him personally, but the listed price for the ranch was $79.5M due to its giant size.

I can personally recall when it was owned by locals  At that price, rather obviously, Robinson isn't planning on making money from cattle.  And to make matters a bit worse, residents of Natrona County got to read about another local outfit going up for sale, which is much smaller, for $9M.

Even into my adult years, by which time it was already impossible for somebody not born into ranching or farming to buy a place such that it could be their vocation, most ranches were owned by locally born ranchers.  This trend of playground pricing is making the status of the land the same as that which English colonists were seeking to escape from.

This could be fixed by amending the Homestead Act. The homesteading portion of that is fixed, but it would still be possible to go back and amend it such that land deeded to individuals under it, had to remain in agricultural use, and had to be held by families that made their money that way. exclusively.

I know it won't be, anytime soon, but it should be.

Revisit "Ad coelum ad damnum"

One of the absolute absurdities of the original Homestead Act is that it gave away not only the surface of the land, but the mineral rights as well.  This made the system sort of like buying lottery tickets. Some people got rich just of because of where they'd chosen to homestead.

I really struggle with the concept of private ownership of minerals, including oil and gas, in the first place.  I understand private enterprise exploiting it, but owning it?  Why?  It's not like private enterprise put the minerals in the ground.

Addressing this creates real constitutional problems, but ideally the mineral wealth of the nation should belong to everyone in it, not private parties.  And it should be exploited, or not, in the national interest, not in the primary economic interest of those who claim to own it.

I know that this brings up the cry of "that's Socialism".  It probably really is, but an unequal accidental distribution of mineral wealth on lands taken from the native inhabitants isn't just.  At a bare minimum, something needs to be looked into.  Indeed, as there was no intent to transfer that mineral title in the first place, perhaps it could collectively be restored and held in truth for the descendants of those original inhabitants.

Tax the wealthy

Every since Ronald Reagan there's been a ludicrous idea that taxing the wealthy hurts the economy. We know that this is completely false.  We also know that a certain percentage of the wealthy will allow themselves to become obscenely wealthy if allowed to, and that they'll harm everyone else as a result.

There's no reason on earth that anyone ought to be a billionaire.  Indeed, if you have more than $50M in assets, you have too much and something is potentially wrong with your character.  High upper income tax rates and wealth taxes can and should address this.  Elon Musk can be nearly just as annoying if his net worth was $50M as whatever it currently is, but he'd be a lot less destructive.

An alternative to this, if this is simply too radical, is to prevent corporations from owning most things, and to provide that once they get to be a certain size, at least 50% of their ownership goes to employees of those corporations.  It'd at least distribute the wealth some, and keep avarice from defining our everyday existence.

Final thoughts

What seems to be clear in any event is that we cannot keep going in this directly. Today's "conservatives" serve the very interests that the American Patriots rebelled against, remote wealth.  In spite of their tattoos and car window stickers, they'd form the Loyalist Militia trying to put down an an agrarian revolution in 1776.  The thing is, that those conditions always lead to revolution. They did in 1776 in North America, and then again in more extreme form in France a few years later.  They lead to the uprisings of 1848, the Anglo Irish War in 1916 and the Russian Revolution in 1917.  It's time to address this while we can, as it will be addressed.

Lex Anteinternet: Cowboy Boots

Lex Anteinternet: Cowboy Boots: Title: An array of boots at the F.M. Light & Sons western-wear store in Steamboat Springs, Colorado.  Library of Congress photographs...

Cowboy Boots

Title: An array of boots at the F.M. Light & Sons western-wear store in Steamboat Springs, Colorado.  Library of Congress photographs.

A long, long time ago on this site, I started a thread on  cowboy boots.  Maybe as long ago as three years, or so. That's not as unusual as it might seem, a lot of threads linger as drafts on this site long before they're published.

19th Century cowboys. their boots are not very visible in this photograph, but where you can see them, they are very high shanked boots.

What is unusual is that I lost it.  But I don't think I'd gotten very far in it before I deleted it.  So, here we are starting afresh, which in this case is pretty much the same as starting.

I like cowboy boots.  I often wear them to my office job, but I've also worn them in the role for which they're actually intended, so I have pretty strong opinions on them.  And  they're also sort of bizarrely tied into the period which we've been looking at, in the context of how they've changed over time and what we now think they are.  I also frankly think that a lot of the history that gets circulated about cowboy boots is frankly wrong.

That history, if you've looked into it at all, generally holds that cowboy boots basically didn't exist until some time after the Civil War, at which time they came into being, sort of all of a sudden, in the 1870s or 1880s. Well, not so much.  Indeed, what we call "cowboy boots" had basically been around a lot longer than that.  

Yep, I'm claiming that the common story of the cowboy boot is flat out wrong.

I guess, with that being the case, we have first ask, what is a cowboy boot?

Well, in its proper form, a cowboy boot is a pull on riding boot with a high, scalloped, heel that's designed for use in a wooden stirrup.  Steel, iron or brass stirrups actually are not the same as wooden stirrups at all, in use, so perhaps we should start there.

Author, riding Wade tree stock saddle, with broad wooden, tin clad, stirrups.

Jonathan Wainright being promoted to General at Ft. Myers Virginia, 1938.  Wainright would be transferred to the Philippines prior to World War Two and would go on to serve as a captive of the Japanese after the fall of the island to the Japanese.  He received the Congressional Medal of Honor.  Here you see the two types of stirrups in use by the U.S. Army at the time. Wainright is riding a flat, English style saddle (likely an officer's pattern then in use) while the two  officers next to him are riding M1928 McClellan saddles equipped with wooden stirrups and stirrups hoods.  Wainwright's boots are not visible but are most likely the field boot then in use.  The officer on the right is wearing M1923 lace up cavalry boots.

Metal stirrups, and wooden stirrups, go relatively far back, although we would do well to note that stirrups themselves came into wide use during the Middle Ages.  Indeed, not only did they come into wide use at that time, they were a technological revolution that greatly enhances the fighting ability of a mounted man allowing the Age of Chivalry, i.e., the mounted knight, to basically be possible.  This isn't to say there weren't cavalrymen before that.  There certainly were, but once the rider could keep his seat with the aid of his feet, his utility and fighting ability was greatly enhanced.  Indeed there is a "stirrup theses" that deals with the revolutionary impact of the stirrup upon mounted combat in Europe, and hence upon history in general.

This isn't  history of the stirrup, but we should note that relatively early on there were wooden and steel stirrups.

 

Wide wooden strirrups are a feature of this Wade Tree saddle. Here they are clad with sheet metal on the outside.

 

Wooden stirrups, as a general rule, tend to be more "rustic". If there's an economy of resources we tend to see wooden stirrups.  Saddles are mostly, at least classically, wood and leather, so keeping on keeping on with wooden stirrups makes sense if that's the material you have at hand.  And if you don't have that at hand, you probably aren't making any saddles to start with.  Assuming that, you don't really need that much metal otherwise.

Leather wrapped wooden stirrups on an Association tree saddle.

Riding with wooden stirrups presents some different considerations than steel stirrups, the principal one for our purpose being that wooden stirrups tend to be quite large.  That's fine, but that presents another problem. . . keeping your foot from going through the stirrup.  If that happens you have a true disaster in progress.

 

Why cowboy boots have the shape that they do.

The solution albeit a partial one, for this problem has always been proper footgear.  Indeed, proper footgear is or should be a major consideration for any rider.  People who ride in tennis shoes should be flogged, as its dangerous.

 

Cowboy with jeans tucked in boots, using taps over his stirrups.  Very traditional set of cowboy gear.  This photograph was taken at the 2010 Sheepherders Fair.

Anyhow, the traditional riding boot for wooden stirrups is a high topped boot (which all real riding boots are, as a rule) with high heels made from leather sections, with leather soles, a somewhat pointed toe, and a scalloped heel. The boot is designed as much to let you get your foot out as anything else.  That's why its pointed, that's why its normally a leather sole, and that's why the heel is scalloped.  If it goes through in a disaster, maybe the scallop will let the boot back out. . . maybe.

 Cowboy Ned Coy on "Boy Dick".  Coy is wearing a Boss Of The Plains hat and scalloped boots.  From the popular threads on hats and caps.

It isn't laced either, due to an economy of resources, because it isn't meant to be walked in all  that much, because it is meant to allow your pants to inside the boot, and it might be capable for the boot to be jerked away in a really bad disaster.

This sort of boot has existed for a really, really, long time.  And its existed in more than one location for a really long time.  Indeed, I've even seen photographs of Afghan riders, well before the tragic Soviet period when things were less mess up there, using a boot roughly of this description.

And I've seen at least one photograph of a Civil War Army officer wearing a boot of this exact type, during the Civil War, with huge rowled spurs.

Don't tell me, therefore, that these came about after the Civil War. They did not.

They were around in some form a long time before the Civil War.

They were popular with riders in the West who were employed in cattle work quite early on for obvious reasons.  Western stock saddles uniformly featured wooden stirrups and still tend to.  Cowboys, moreover, did very little ground work if they could avoid it. And their horses tended to be rank.  A boot of that type is exactly what they needed.

They were distinct, however.  Mostly this was because most riding boots in the United States mid 19th Century were low heel, or partially low heel.  Most stirrups east of the Mississippi were steel or iron.  Not all, but most.  And  most men who wore boots, and it was mostly men, were were doing a lot of ground work as well. So, most boots reflected that.

Indeed one big user of horses, the U.S. Army, didn't even officially issue a riding type boot until late in the Civil War.  Otherwise, it simply issued its ankle high shoe to everyone. That says something about the focus that generally existed on the topic.  It probably also says how much more riding had started to go in the service during the Civil War.

 Cavalry orderly wearing low topped riding boots.  These boots may or may not have been an issue pair, as there was never an official Civil War general issue pattern of cavalry boot.

Union cavalryman, Civil War.  He's likely not wearing riding boots at all, but rather the issue ankle high service shoe.

Union cavalry officer.  Officers purchased their uniforms, but the pattern of boot shown here became very common during the war and was ultimately issued to enlisted men.  High topped, somewhat scalloped heel.

After the Civil War the Army determined to issue riding boots to cavalrymen and started to do so. As I'm not an expert on this topic, and as this isn't the history of the military riding boot of the 19th Century, I won't try to detail it, but a variety of high topped, medium heeled boots were issued all the way through the remainder of the 19th Century until the 1890s, when the service shoe for cavalrymen oddly came back in.  

 Detail from Edgar Paxson's meticulously researched Custer's Last Stand.  Paxon here depicts the cavalry boot in use in 1876 very well.  A very high topped boot than ran up over the knee to protect the knee, square toes (they had no left or right) and slightly high heels.  This boot, while a good design, was commonly regarded as uncomfortable by soldiers which may, in part, have been because they were built by Federal prisoners who had, therefore, relatively low motivation.

The common story on the cowboy boot accordingly holds that men went home wearing their boots from the Union and Confederate armies and then went into livestock work, and the cowboy boots was born.

Not so much.

For one thing, the story is really probably more the other way around. Confederate cavalry men were at first drawn from stock working men anyhow and they were already wearing riding boots.  If the boots made it through the war, a doubtful proposition, they just went home wearing what they'd left with.  If their boots wore out, they would have been lucky to get a good replacement pair of riding boots.  No doubt some did, but those boots would have been of no discernible pattern and they would have really just been riding boots.

Amongst the very first cowboys driving north Southerners would have been more common than Northerners, but not for long.  Be that as it may, it 's highly doubtful that piles of Union riding boots ended up being worn by discharged Union cavalrymen turned cowboys.  And as noted, riding boots had been around for eons prior to the Civil War with all of their basic details well established.  It was the Army that was slow to adopt them.

Cowboys near chuck and supply wagon.

Rather, after the Civil War the frontier opened up for cattle and the cowboy came onto the Plains.  He was wearing riding boots, and riding a wooden stirrup saddle that was evolved, but not much, from those used by vacqueros in Texas and Mexico.  Their boots reflected that, and fairly rapidly they became to take on some distinct features, although perhaps not as distinct as we might suppose.

It might be noted, and probably should be noted, that cowboy boots are one item that cowboys did not adopt from vaqueros and caballeros.  Mexican agricultural horsemen did not wear cowboy boots, but rather an ankle high pointed toe, moderate heeled, boot.  That's a bit surprising, but when we consider how they dressed perhaps it is not as surprising as it might at first seem.  They tended to wear leather leggins below the knee for protection if they needed it, and they also wore both chapaderos and later half chaps, known to Western horsemen as chaps and chinks, for protection.  They also wore wool clothing almost uniformly.  While I don't know t hat its related, living and working in a hot environment, the high topped boots may have been less attractive to them than to riders further north.  Additionally, most Mexican cowboy gear actually uses an economy of leather, leather being the product which Mexican cattle were actually raised for, and that may have reflected itself in their boots design.  Leather economy can impact boots permanently, as we shall shortly see.

 Emiliano Zapata (seated, center) and his staff.  There's a mix of clothing here, as there typically is in photos of Mexican revolutionaries (the figure on the far left is wearing a type of boot that darned near resembles one we'll address later, the packer) but all the seated men are wearing botin charro, a type of ankle high, pointed toe, riding boot.

So the scalloped heeled boot came to be strongly identified with cowboys, and at the same time cowboys, who tended to invest a lot of their tiny income in their gear, that being their hat, their boots, and their saddle, sometimes bought cowboy boots that had elemental elements.  Farmers didn't buy boots that had any ornamental elements, in contrast.  Spending a lot of money on their limited equipment, they wanted it to look good and distinct when they could. And that caused the Mexican influenced ornamental stitching on cowboy boots to come about.  While it does create a distinct appearance, the boots are really only slightly evolved from other riding boots in common use in the mid 19th Century.

 My regular cowboy boots.  The ones I wear to work, when I wear cowboy boots to work.

My working cowboy boots.

And of course Americans became fascinated with cowboys quite early on.

Cowboy boots basically assumed that form quite early, and indeed they retain it if they're really traditional boots.  A working 20th Century cowboy with high shank boots could walk into a 19th Century camp and pretty much not have anyone take much notice of his footgear, assuming that he went for something relatively traditional.

Well, like a lot of things, the boots changed as a result of a war.  World War One to be exact.

 Stretching leather, about 1915.

Because World War Two was such a colossal war, and because we tend to simply accept the line that the United States was the "arsenal of democracy" during the Great War, we have a pretty skewed concept of American production in the World War One time frame. Simply put, it was a mess.

Not only was the Army trying to raise a force, at breakneck speed (more rapidly by quite some measure than during World War Two) but it was trying to deploy it overnight.  It was also trying to equip it overnight.  The peacetime Army didn't have anywhere near the amount of stuff necessary to equip the huge Army that the US was trying to raise, equip, ship and deploy in 1917.

And this included leather goods.

The US didn't really even know what it needed in the way of leather goods, so it let out contracts for things like saddles and boots in absurdly large numbers.  There's a real reason that M1904 McClellan saddles are so common.  They made so darned many. Same with boots, the numbers made were astounding.  Absurd, even.

With that sort of demand going on for leather goods, the supply became very strained, and cowboy boots were the victims of that. The leather for high topped boots just wasn't there. So, as a wartime measure, bootmakers introduced the "stubbie" or "pee wee" boot, which is what most people, at least those who aren't cowboys, wear today.

 Tom Mix, 1919.  Mix was an actor, not a cowboy by trade, although the World War One veteran did buy a ranch in Wyoming after the war and he actually ranched here.  Anyhow, actors make notoriously bad examples of what cowboys actual wore, and this is no exception.  The hat is far too large for anything outside of Texas (where sugarloaf sombreros were really large), the pistols are M1873 cavalry models, which had 7" barrels and which were not favored by cowboys, who instead favorted the 5" artillery model. the pants are way too tight. The boots, moreover, are peewees. The heels, however, are just right for the era, and not uncommon amongst working cowhands now.

That was the wartime solution.  And it impacted how the boots were actually worn. Prior to WWI cowboys normally tucked their trouser in their boots, and they still sometimes will, as the photo posted above shows.  This was the routine habit, although sometimes they'd pull their pants down over their boots.  Having worn boots both ways while riding, if I'm going to ride for a long time, I'll tuck them in.  More comfortable, for the long haul.

But you really can't do that very well with pee wees, and cowboys who had to buy new boots during the war were embarrassed by the economy of leather and how it looked, so they took to pulling their pants down over their boots.  Better to wear out your pants and get them dirty than to look like a boofador.

Traditional boots do not go on as easy as peewees.  And you'll want some high socks if you wear them also.  My Olathe traditional mule hide cowboy boots.

Well, cowboy boots have always been regarded as stylish and have received a lot of non working wear by non cow hands.  The peewee boot was tailored made for the person who liked the style, but who didn't ride every day. Indeed, as I have retained the old really high style, I can attest that getting them on and off isn't easy.

And in truth mid height boots worked out okay for a lot of working applications. So the peewee, unless it was really low, quit being a mark of shame and became the common boot fairly quickly, save for the ones that had really low tops (which some did). By the 1920s a boot like that sported by Tom Mix above was pretty common, probably more common than the kind that ran to the knee.  With the spread of this sort of boot on the range, and in town, cowboy boots really entered sort of a new era.  The old style kept on keeping on, but a new style, worn by a lot of people in town, arrived.

 These aren't cowboy boots, they're Wellingtons.  Marketed, however, as "Ropers".

All along a similar low shanked ridingp with your heels, down with your head boot was around as well, the Wellington.  Named after the Duke of Wellington, who favored them, Wellingtons' were a peewee variant of the common Riding Boot, that boot worn by those who rode flat, or "English", saddles. Low topped, and low heeled, they always had a following amonst those who rode a bit or who rode flat saddles but whom didn't favor the knee high boot generally worn by those who used steel stirrups.  They were quite similar, in some fashion, with some of the lower shanked boots worn by Army officers in the 1860s through the 1890s, and therefore had a natural retained following there.  Some European armies, including the English Army, flat out adopted them as riding boots.  At some point in the 20th Century, and at least by the 1940s, the U.S. Army allowed them as alternative footgear for dress wear and they became particularly popular with pilots as dress gear. So much so, in fact, that after the USAF was officially separated from the Army after World War Two black Wellingtons were allowed as private purchase dress shoes for officers.

 

Working rancher with very low heeled boots, perhaps Wellingtons.

 

The popularity of Wellingtons plateaued however until some marketing genius at the Justin company thought of re-branding them as "Ropers'.  Where this idea came from is anyone idea, but it was a marketing stroke of genius.  With the rebranding Wellingtons crossed over into the cowboy boot market and someawht remain there. Their popularity seems to have diminished a bit, but then boots with "walking heels" have increased in popularity as well, with those two boot types occupying each others niche, more or less.

While on this topic, let us dispel the notion that the type of rubber or synthetic boot the English call "wellies" are Wellingtons. They are not.  Apparently the name "Wellington" was applied to them at some point due to a purely superficial relationship they bore to real Wellingtons.  The British users truncated that  name to "wellies", but whatever they are, they are not Wellingtons.  The Duke of Wellington would not be pleased if you thought so.

Wellington at Waterloo. Seriously, the man was not wearing rubber boots.

With cowboy boots as fashion, we do of course see varieties of them.  In some eras, the 50s in particularly it seems to me, the toes became very narrow.  In others, the toes are fairly round.  Square toes were very common in 19th Century boots and have recently returned.  Originally, that was a manufacturing item, as square toes were easy to manufacture and with some boots and shoes there was no left or right.  Now, it's just a matter of fashion.

 

Working rancher with a pair of cowboy boots with a walking heel.

Heel height waxes and wanes as well, although with modern boots you don't seen the really high "doggin" (ie bulldogging) heel nearly as much as you did in earlier eras.  You still see them, however.  As noted, "walking heels", which are basically a conventional shoe heel, are now also common and you see them in use even by working hands.    Every now and then, however, doggin heels will enjoy a comeback, and they never really go away.  As noted, working hands will wear them, and in towns more than a few folks wear lower riding heels.

Indeed, I suppose only a tiny fraction of cowboy boots are worn by people who actually ride. For that reason it'd be interesting to take a census of actual working hands and see what they wear.  By my casual observation, really high topped boots are more common with working hands than a person might suppose, which makes sense.  Medium height boots are fairly common as well, but you do see stubbies and ropers out there, as the photos in this thread attest to.  In town, of course, most folks aren't wearing the really high boots like I do.  Indeed, I'd guess only a tiny fraction of people who wear cowboy boots in town do that.

Cowboy boots aren't the only riding boots, of course, and we'll deal with that on a later thread, to the extent its relevant to this site and the period of time it focuses on.  But cowboy boots are interesting in general, so in looking at footgear, we've started off here.