Recent news accounts like this of the FBI’s announcement that it has concerns with people who claim themselves to be Sovereign Citizens evokes thoughts of our country’s founding. The patriots who were associated with country’s founding fathers had to consider the threat of apprehension by the authorities when they were contemplating whether or not to break free from the rule of King George and Great Britain. It is no small thing to break free from an established government. That is why the American Revolution was so historic in the annals of human history.
Sovereign Citizens have taken a different interpretation of current prevailing viewpoints of what it means to be an American and living in the United States. In essence, they seem to want to separate themselves from the current laws of the land and live by a different set of rules from the mainstream citizens. They appear to describe the current laws as illegitimate when pitted against the rights American are described as having as written in the Constitution. In the video that runs on their website, the woman makes a reference to the USA as a corporation to which the Sovereign Citizens do not want to participate. I have come across other references about this Corporation over the years and have been interested in learning more about it but then abandoning the issue altogether due to time constraints and thoughts about what does it really matter any way? Maybe the Sovereign Citizens just had more time and interest in seeing what it is all about. I am not sure.
Today in the year 2012, the vast majority of citizens are law abiding taxpayers of which many have serious concerns and objections about how our elected / appointed representatives are managing our national, state, and local governments. It would be members of this segment of American society who organized the Tea Party and /or might be active in the Libertarian political party. Many people who follow the current rules of the electoral and political system have expended a good many years of their lives and personal resources to try and get more Constitutionally compliant leaders into government at all levels.
Anybody who has followed American political events over the past 70 years knows that the Republicans and Democrats backed by highly financed special interest groups have claimed wins in most if not all major political campaigns for public office. It would be very frustrating for any normal person to begin to think that there has to be a better way to push back the problem of the wrong people being elected to run the government because they have what appears to be an inappropriate ability to wield greater influence than a majority of most individual citizens in the election.
Maybe that is what led to this group that calls themselves Sovereign Citizens. When I think of them and why they do what they do, there is a part of me that can sort of relate and understand and maybe even agree with the rationale as to why they would want to “not play by the rules” of the prevailing form of government.
Let me be clear, I do not condone violence and aggression against other people including the lawful authorities. That noted, for purposes of trying to understand their behavior and actions so as to learn and maybe improve the situation that is causing the FBI to escalate their surveillance of this group, perhaps Sovereign Citizens simply have more courage to push back and defend themselves from the government in a fashion that based on their political beliefs, can lead to what looks like violence and aggression against the State.
Obviously there is a stigma that mainstream society attaches to people who are members of such fringe groups. But I get a sense that the fringe is growing. Maybe the Sovereign Citizens are just an early version, a way-out in-front organized group ahead of the game. Sooner or later it seems inevitable that more and more supposedly Free People who have become frustrated with their government run amok would form in this coalesced fashion if unable to realize the changes they see as being needed to save their way of life because of a corrupted and unconstitutional electoral and political system and government.
What I wrote above does not seem to differ much with what Thomas Jefferson and the Founders had to wrestle with when they decided to break free from Great Britain. On the outset of the Revolutionary War, they wrote and affirmed with sacred honor the Declaration of Independence. The words below from that historic document tied to our country’s founding seem to mimic in some part at least, to what might be compelling the Sovereign Citizens to opt out of the current rule of law.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
Framed in this light, are the Sovereign Citizens really that bad or just that misunderstood by the current authorities?
Living in America 