Sovereign Citizen idiots

Where they do get this shit from? They are funny though. The cops seem to have infinite patience for their bullshit.

My brother used to be a "sovereign citizen".

They are lunatics

They're just a dumber version of libertarians - who are also dumb.

If they were Black (or gay), the cops wouldn’t be so patient. I’m sick of the double standard. I’ve been behind these idiots at the DMV. 🙄

The cops have patience because sovereign citizens are known to be dangerous. It’s not wise to escalate with them.

I always tried to avoid these clients but many years ago I finally got one. I did a deep dive on the issues and the groups pushing this crap. It is really nothing more than a grift. Ther's no legal basis for it try as they might to come up with one. None of their alleged legal arguments make sense. I don't even know where I put my research on the subject.

A lot of it came out of a Philadelphia group and they make reps available to help out defendants (not for free) - these people are not lawyers and they give themselves some title which sounds vaguely lawyer-ish. I can't remember now what they call themselves. Most of those people faced indictment for all kinds of fraud.

These people are primarily just looking for a way out of paying. Or they are a bit nuts. One of the judges in my courthouse finally issued a thorough legal opinion on the issue.

I can watch the entire parade of stupidity but the 2 I watched were hilarious.

Is this the new iteration of last summer’s “autonomous zones” in Seattle and Portland?

I have a neighbour like these folks. Batshit insane, does what he wants, hated in the neighbourhood.

They all come across as children trying to argue with their parents against house rules.

R1, why did he change his mind?

I am reviving this thread, as I recently stumbled across "Sovereign Citizens in Court" videos on youtube, and went down the rabbit hole watching these idiots, and being amazed at how patient the judges were.

This one ends with a snot-nosed little asshole getting tased

Soverign Citizens and its variations, like anarcho-capitalists (SIC) and libertarians are just lazy pseudo anarchists that want the freedom and independence of anarchism without letting go of capitalism, it's that simple. America is particularly prolific in producing this type of idiots.

They're all armed because of course the Second Amendment is sacred, just like the Bible. So cops and judges and court personnel are very careful around these guys. Whenever they had hearings scheduled, the courthouse I worked at always had extra armed guards present in the courtroom and the halls.

Some of them are just lunatics. One of the videos on the channel I link above featured a guy dressed in wizard robes, and it was impossible to follow what he he was saying, as he was pronouncing the punctuation in what he was reading. Every other word was hyphen, and his statement was peppered with Tilda, comma, and he ended every sentence with the word period.

He appeared in another video claiming to be a sovereign of the Kingdom of Hawaii (this was a Hawaiian court) and declaring his rights as an indigenous Polynesian. This was, of course, a white dude.

P. Barnes was NOT having any more of that mess, R11. Ha!

R14 (or anyone who knows): what is the deal with punctuation? They insert it in their names, and not where it's used by normal people, like O'Brien -- more like Timot'hy or Jasp;er. Does it have some quasi-historical or occult meaning for them?

Makes you want to smack the arrogance off their face.

R17 It is really crazy, and I don't full understand it, but it leads back to the same root as some of the lunacy surrounding the January insurrection. It all leads back to when the US abandoned the gold standard. According to them, when the US did that, they secured their currency against the citizens, instead of a supply of gold. As a result, each person was converted into a corporate "straw man" who is identified by having their names spelled in all caps. When they are arrested and their name appears in documents in all caps, this refers to the corporate straw man, and not the person. They will also change their names, or insert weird punctuation into their existing names as a way to game the system, and separate themselves from their "straw man" and make themselves immune from US law.

This, of course, doesn't actually work. They also will claim to be of Moorish nationality, or other nationalities to declare that they have sovereign immunity.

They also tend to refuse to acknowledge that they are driving a vehicle. They twist this by saying that driving is a commercial function, and that they are "traveling" and the right to travel is enshrined in the constitution.

You have to twist your brain into knots to try to follow their reasoning. I could go on, but this is long enough already

PS Some of them go so far as to refuse that their car is a motor vehicle, and will insist that it isn't a motor vehicle, it is "private property."

There's a whole deal with these sovereign citizen folks about two Constitutions, one the original drafted by the Founding Fathers which uses the wording "The Constitution for the United States of America".

The District of Columbia Organic Act of 1871, created to give DC its own government, used the wording "The Constitution of the United States of America."

They think this 1871 act was actually a "new constitution" that created original citizens and a kind of second strawman citizen owned by the "corporation" of the United States. They claim this based almost entirely on the fact that the Constitution says "for the United States" and the 1871 act says "OF the United States."

A lot of their beliefs hinge on weird legalese and capitalization and punctuation. It doesn't make much sense.

It not only involves the government. Some of these Sovereign Citizens take over private property, including homes, and then it's a huge burden, legally and financially, to try to regain ownership. I agree that most of them just need a good slapping.

Thanks, R20 -- I'm glad, for my own sanity and yours, that the "explanation" makes no sense!

I recall from one of the court cases I observed, that they also have some theory based on the gold standard or the invalidity of contracts or something, about not having to pay the mortgages on the houses they own and live in. So they defended their "homestead" from foreclosure by barring all the doors and windows and arming themselves against the cops who were trying to take possession for the bank whose mortgage hadn't been paid for years -- that ended with the cops entering through a flimsy back door and handcuffing the man of the house before anyone got shot. But everyone feared a Branch Davidian type confrontation, with the house being burned down and everyone (including the cops) killed. The husband was jailed for awhile, which left the wife and kids adrift. A blight on civilization!

I feel like a Venn diagram showing the overlap between Sovereign Citizens and Q Loons would just be a circle