MugzyBrown: I just don't agree with the idea that some guys signed a contract 250 years ago and everybody who happens to be born within imaginary lines are forever bound by that contract.

That's the thing.  You can leave.  You are not forced to stay within those imaginary lines.  I have yet to see a sovereign citizen case that is about actual rights or individual independence.  All of them are about avoiding responsibility.  If you don't want the responsibility of obeying traffic laws, don't drive.  If you don't want the responsibility of paying property taxes, don't own a home.  You aren't forced to do these things by that contract signed 250 years ago.  These sovereign citizens aren't advocating revolution or the toppling of a corrupt government.  They're advocating gaming the system, the same system that gives them the right to try and game it.  If their arguments were based more on solid principles and less on semantics, they might gain more respect.

And by "throw the book at" we mean he was fined $50 and ordered to pay court costs on charges of not having a driver's license or proof of insurance and $25 and court costs on a light law violation.

Though a $75 book could hurt when thrown, if it's one of those big coffee table books.

/ but I digress

Cargo-cult law.  They think if they say long, legal-sounding words, their case is airtight.

Discordulator: So, to anyone wanting to declare sovereignty. From the moment of declaration, you should hereby forfeit any and all claim to contract or legal redress as a member of the nation you are declaring sovereignty from.

As of that moment you are trespassing on foreign soil, and should be subject to the same laws as undocumented immigrants. We will extradite you to any nation that will acknowledge your citizenship, of your choosing, and bill you for the costs (including infrastructure costs, like roads) that your trespass has incurred.

Failure of any nation's soil being willing to accept you will result in a lifelong garnishment of wages to cover the cost you incur to the people whose land you are a foreign visitor to.

No, see, the really funny part is that these yahoos claim that they still enjoy all protections of the Constitution up through the 13th Amendment. Part of their mystic legal incantations is that the 14th Amendment created some distinction between "State Citizens" and "US Citizens" such that you can choose to be one without being the other. So, all Constitutional rights and protections before that point count for the "original" "State Citizens" portion and, provided you maintain that you are a citizen of your state but not a US citizen, you still get all those sweet, sweet protections.

Of course, they also believe that each State Citizen Who Is Not A US Citizen is legally owns a secret bank account of gold (I swear I am not making this up) and that any debts they owe to a "legitimate" government authority can simply be drafted against this bank account. So, take their status as being rational human beings with a grain of salt roughly the size of Iowa.

I'd love to meet a "sovereign citizen" some day, it'd be even funnier if they asked to bum a cigarette and I could ask them for their customs paperwork and charge them an export tariff.

I think when you call yourself "sovereign" it's like asking the government to "come at me bro!"

MugzyBrown: Farce-Side: So what's the real basis behind this sovereign citizen crap? Nobody's ever been able to really explain it to me.

We are all born into a contract of rules we never have a chance to review and agree to.

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them,


If the US Colonies could do it with the British, why can't NJ do it with the US, or Newark with NJ, or the whatever neighborhood with Newark, etc

So, I'm going to assume you are either connected to or are somewhat sympathetic to the sovereign citizen movement (correct me if I'm wrong).  Basically, what you're saying is, sovereign citizens believe they were born into a set of circumstances which they find disagreeable, and therefore are not obligated by any authority to obey the laws of the land.

CSB, the same thing happened to me when Verizon took over alot of Alltell's wireless network here.  I was told by a guy working at the Verizon store that because I hadn't signed a contract with Verizon, I could cancel the service and not be forced to pay the cancellation fee.  Long story short, it was cheaper to pay the cancellation fee than to hire a lawyer and go to court over the cancellation fee, so I still had to pay it, even though I didn't have a contract with Verizon. End CSB.

I'm not going to mock these people trying to get out of fines and taxes, because hey, who doesn't want to not give away their money, but I would argue that if you use the roads paid for by a government entity, if you use the currency manufactured by a governemnt entity, if you take advantage of any other services provided by a government entity, then you have indeed knowingly entered into a contract with said government to observe any and all laws regulating the use of said services.  Don't like the rules?  Get out of Dodge.  Nobody is forcing you to remain a US citizen.  There are several other countries to choose from.

I'll agree that sometimes it's necessary for a people to dissolve the ties to their governement.  I will not agree that that time is whenever you get a parking ticket you don't like, or when you have to pay the same taxes everyone else does.

DamnYankees: The single most frustrating, infuriating episode of Law & Order ever was about sovereign citizens. Just felt like pointing that out.

Are you sure it wasn't the episode where Jack McCoy grossly manipulated the law to make a political statement?  I hated that one.

parasol: i hope for some witty officer to reply to this sort of thing "sovereign citizen? without diplomatic immunity, you must obey traffic laws and? where are your diplomatic plates? and where is your passport to enter THIS
sovereign nation?"

but i doubt any LEO wants to feed this sort of behavior

Like I mentioned earlier, that's when these nutballs start invoking their Constitutional rights for being "State Citizens" -- they don't need such documents, you see, because they can still claim all protections granted in the Constitution from the Articles up through the 13th Amendment.

Cake, eat, still have. As noted by others in this thread, it's 100% about wanting all the protections and benefits of society, but none of the responsibilities. So, they engage in magical thinking and "cargo-cult law" (a perfect description) to delude themselves into believing that they have gamed the system.

MugzyBrown: I just don't agree with the idea that some guys signed a contract 250 years ago and everybody who happens to be born within imaginary lines are forever bound by that contract.

But that's the way it has always been.  We are lucky to even have a contract.  Most people throughout history were born into a kingdom or an empire and were subject to whatever the ruler wanted.  Everyone in the history of civilization has been born into a 'system' of some kind or another, and they have the choice to either stay or leave.

These people are more than welcome to form their own country in the same way countries have always been formed.  They can buy land from another country and then set up whatever, or they can invade and conquer land from another country, or they can discover new land and claim it.  I'm sure with enough money some south pacific country would sell an island free and clear.  Then they can defend their new country, set up an economy, and build diplomatic relationships just like it's been done for 10,000 years.  It'll be like Civ 6: Reality Edition.

Why these people feel they are entitled to reap the benefits of living in an organized society without paying into the system or being held to its rules is beyond me.

geekbikerskum: sprgrss: Which is incredibly stupid because you would never fly a fringed flag on a ship because the fringe would be ripped off in a heartbeat.

Does anyone know what the gold fringe actually *means* and why it's there?  Is there a historical context for it?  Did it have some meaning in the past that's now vestigial?  Unfortunately trying to search for this stuff on Google turns up nothing but pages with so much derp about Freemasons, sovereign citizens, and the non-validity of the Sixteenth Amendment that it makes my eyes bleed and my brain hurt.

From what I've read, it's just an aesthetic thing. Yellow is a nice contrasting color, and frames the flag nicely against any background. It's found on indoor-use flags.

m00: Not very impressed with the police

>>The officer said the driver "challenged me with different codes and stuff at first."

Oh no, the driver probably has an obnoxious level of case law memorized for just this event. Well guess what, it's an officer's job to know the laws too.

Well... no, not really. It's an officer's job to know what the limits of his reasonable authority are in a given situation, not every philosophical nuance of the controlling opinion of the appellate court that established those limits back in 1903 with the landmark case of  Joe v. Schmoe. It sounds like this guy rattled off a bunch of mumbo-jumbo to try to confuse the cop in question into forgetting that it's okay to pull someone over when you witness a traffic violation. Not surprisingly, it didn't work. The correct procedure in that case is to write the ticket and let the esteemed legal theorist explain to the traffic court judge why school zone speed limits don't apply to vehicles with an odd number of wheels.

Zenith: I say you can only consider your self a soveriegn citizen once you acquire either

1 a nuclear arsenal
or
2 a superpower ( and a really good one at that i.e not shooting webs or climbing walls so superman level stuff)

Dmitri Ravinoff nods in approval.

Circusdog320: guess it's okay to use roads funded by taxes....

Taxation is theft.

doubled99: Yeah!!! Authority rules!!!

Just ask this guy.

He was fined $50 and ordered to pay court costs on charges of not having a driver's license or proof of insurance and $25 and court costs on a light law violation.

A $50 fine (plus possibly unlimited "court costs") is the maximum punishment by a city court judge in Tennessee. You have a right to a real trial if the fine is greater.

In my area he'd be offered a deal that would set him back a couple hundred dollars and keep the conviction off his record if he got a license. And he would defy the court and refuse to get a license, and the judge would be annoyed at him, and trouble would follow.

This calls for P. Barnes and his taser.