It’s sort of like how in war you don’t shoot at an enemy emissary coming over for a parley under a white flag. Sure, you could, and you could abuse a white flag to get close enough for a suicide bomb, but breaking that compact is liable to bite you in the ass down the road. It’s in everyone’s mutual interest to respect it.
6 Likes
Why should you move?
Next you will be saying that the state will deport, you don’t say where,
people who disagree with it
I’ve witnessed police greatness in the emergency room.
A man drunk beyond any state I’ve ever known was bleeding in many places as he lay on a stretcher. Most likely victim of a beating. He was belligerent and incoherent, and kept trying to remove his drip.
The officer used humor and the deepest well of patience in human history as he tried to get a name, anything out of this obnoxious, helpless, senseless man.
Was amazing. Wish they’d call this guy when a young black man is accused of acting dangerously…
15 Likes
I agree with you in principle but we might disagree about what constitutes an unjust law. And with Congress as corrupted as it is, the whole system of making laws is broken.
I’d love to see racism in all forms ended. But it’s likely there will be ignorance in some form as long as there are people. In the meantime, we can work on fixing the systems that allow racists channels for abuse.
I wouldn’t be surprised.
3 Likes
But it is Putin’s MO. Yes, the most obvious “separatist” Russian puppet states are directly part of his plans for empire building and sphere of influence consolidation - that’s Transnistria in Moldova, Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia, and Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics in Ukraine. But Russia also backs separatist movements outside the potential imperial borders simply to distract and weaken its enemies. Russia regularly hosts conferences for separatist movements - including Catalonia, Northern Ireland, as well as Texas and California, e.g.:
(Of course, separatism is only good if it happens outside Russia. For example, Crimea splitting from Ukraine and joining Russia was an expression of its peoples’ right of self determination, whereas any talk of Crimea (or Chechnya, or Siberia, or…) splitting from Russia is “threatening its territorial integrity” and punishable as extremism by decades in prison.)
Backing separatism is a single instance of a general trend of sowing disunity - Russian media (and banks) are always happy to help those who want to split the EU, like Brexit campaigners, French National Front or Hungarian Jobbik, and those who want to split NATO, like Trump.
I’d guess that with Trump openly praising Putin there may arise more “sovereign” nutjobs in America who would value Putin’s approval, so I wouldn’t dismiss @Mister44’s idea.
If you believe in statist authority, that is a certainty.
That is really interesting; thank you. I guess I keep thinking of Heinlein’s “Coventry” story, where criminals are sent to this kind of enclosed place. Naturally there it’s survival of the fittest bully, which I think is probably the endpoint to any kind of anarchy/sovereign citizen organization. Note that I haven’t any education in this area, except for maybe Heinlein. 
1 Like
Hm. I’m not sure that hosting a conference that would generally be rejected to happen in the US or UK or EU constitutes the exact same thing as what @Mister44 is suggesting. It also assumes that these groups have no real agency of their own and are merely puppets of one or the other imperial power. Even back during the Soviet Union days, the US was all too prone to assume that various groups had to be backed by the Kremlin, especially if they espoused even the slightest leftist line. Or you can take the various cases of anti-colonial movements. When they gave the Lenin prize to people such as Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, they may have sought to exert pressure on her, but it’s pretty clear she was her own person who wasn’t a puppet by any stretch of the imagination:
I do take your point that the Russians might be seeking to exert influence, but we shouldn’t make the mistake of assuming that the people in question are simply puppets as a result. We made that mistake during the Cold War and we should learn from the past if we expect to not repeat it.
And my point is that doing this inside the US is a whole different ballgame that likely isn’t worth the headache it would cause for the Russian government.
3 Likes
I believe in a strong democratic process that pushes for fair and just laws, which maximizes the freedoms of individuals and distributes resources so we all can access a life that isn’t dominated by want.
The “state” has a mixed record of doing so, but given the right pressure it has worked in favor of oppressed people as much as it has for the oppression of people. The state is a tool, nothing more. It can be either a tool of the people or a tool of those who would oppress us.
17 Likes
In a democracy laws are a compact, an agreement between citizens about what we can and can’t do. The system isn’t perfect, there will be disagreements and unjust laws do exist, but there are rules for how we can change them too.
For a “sovereign citizen” to claim they aren’t a citizen and the laws don’t apply to them is just another way of saying they are an “outlaw”, which means they will get arrested. Duh.
I just wonder how many more “sovereign citizens” will get arrested before they start realizing that the phrase isn’t a get-out-of-jail-free card.
3 Likes
She’s referring to a particularly butchered interpretation of a clause from the Articles of Confederation (the foundational american law that was superseded by the constitution). The clause basically says that states can’t treat citizens of other states differently from their own under the law. People travelling in another state are “free inhabitants” of that state rather than “free citizens” of that state, back when being a citizen of a state was a thing.
2 Likes
But as far as I am aware those “free inhabitants” were still subject to the state and local laws of the place they were traveling, were they not?
3 Likes
True. But of course since the articles of confederation were superseded by the constitution, it’s all moot anyway.
3 Likes
Yeah, absolutely. Hence “particularly butchered” 
It seems kind of like a 4 year old “I don’t wanna!” reaction to laws in search of a “see! see!” supporting argument, no matter how much said argument completely misses the point
5 Likes
Not sure how you got from ‘claiming sovereignty doesn’t exempt you from the law of the land’ to “it is good to be obedient to laws”.
The U.S. has plenty of invariably anti-authority citizens whose attitude is (in the words of Rage Against the Machine’s Zack de la Rocha) ‘fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me’. Which, from the cop’s point of view, is really all that this woman is saying. The reason she’s being criticized is that she touts this ignorant claim of being a ‘sovereign citizen’ without any apparent understanding of what sovereignty means.
If she’d just said ‘fuck you, I’m not getting out of the car’, the video would’ve likely stayed obscure on YouTube and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
5 Likes
I would have supposed that someone claiming to be immune to laws based on being a sovereign citizen would be saying so just to be belligerent (i.e. they may believe they should be immune but would still know that the argument wouldn’t really work - even if unjustly so).
This woman, though, seems genuinely horrified at what is happening to her. I think she honestly believes that this officer is just ignorant and that his better-educated supervisor would quickly clarify the situation and admonish him to let her go.
It’s kind of sad to see her entire world view being destroyed.
5 Likes
“Crazy for the Blue, White, and Red…
And Yellow
Fringe!
Crazy, for the Blue, White, Red, and Yellow!”
—Hair
1 Like
Indeed, someone on Twitter said to just walk away from the police, and I recommended looking at your skin first, to be sure it wasn’t the shade that draws fire, and boy, did they squawk.
Had (probably still have; haven’t checked) a relative down somewhere who believed if you didn’t use your ZIP code, you didn’t owe taxes. He was just plain odious.
3 Likes
Sure, its wrong.
Is this about things like national debt? How about local community spending. Roads, firemen, schools, street lights?
Is this kind of debt, something you didn’t consent to, evil?
The state is given power, authorized to coerce and yes, use force in order to fulfill its mandate.
You may be talking about abuse, but you keep conflating power with morality.
Should is the wrong question to ask, in every sense possible. Asking whether the state should or shouldn’t do a thing is the most meaningless thing one can do. The second most meaningful thing a person can do is ask herself whether she can accept society as is or if she will attempt to change it.
The most important thing a person can do is understand that society is not concerned with the individual’s benefit and that asking the state to act in your best interest (as in You personally) is not only antisocial, it’s silly.
I’m reminded of Robocops prime directive’s, (yes, including the hidden fourth one:
“Serve the public trust”
“Protect the innocent”
“Uphold the law”
(Classified) “Never Oppose an OCP Officer”
Society, like family is not about consent. Its at most, opt in/out. And opting out doesn’t change your relationship to other people around you. In fact I would say that opting out is not even an option insofar as the state will not allow you to opt out in any meaningful sense.
If all of this makes you feel trapped, I can sympathize. but power does not concede without demand, and what you’re talking about here is about what you believe ought to be (without arguing why it ought to be that way), and as if it is a possibility given a world full of nothing but flawed humans who have to do things as not lie cheat and steal for their own benefit to get this to work.
This reply turned into a rant somehow, I don’t know how, I don’t know where.
Edit: Fixed (some) incoherent rambling.
3 Likes
