The bit I’ve never quite followed is why they think that US government, which they say has done some kind of deal that means it’s somehow sold the entire population (or something), and still think that if they say the right words that somehow the government will let them off their taxes.
Surely any government capable of selling all of it’s citizens isn’t going to give a flying fuck what you say in court, except possibly to drop you in an even deeper hole (if you’re going to keep claiming that you’re not a citizen, then why would you expect the same rights as one as regards cruel or unusual punishment)? Surely this cruel government which has ‘unjustly’ demanded taxes is just going to double down and charge you more?
It’s similar to my bafflement about people needing guns to ‘protect myself from the government’. It’s the US Government. They have fucking nukes. Your AR-15 is not going to do much against a fucking tank. If they decide to kill you, then no amount of extended magazines or red-dot sights are going to help.
BTW, those rights are not exclusively reserved for citizens. They apply to anyone within the US interacting with the government. The Constitution provides those rights to “people.”
@ fortunecookybot:
“You don’t be disappointed if nobody is beautiful.”
“You will have weird names, and it`will actualize itself.”
“I remember.”
@ FortuneBot538:
“Better be the labor great or small… do it at all.”
“Devotion will make your heart that every day is the best day of the day.”
“Happiness begins with facing life with a nut be prepared to accept a wondrous opportunity in the home.”
fwiw, rights aren’t given by the us constitution. things like protection from cruel and unusual punishment are recognized as intrinsic human rights that the government cannot abridged.
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
it doesn’t ( isn’t supposed to at least ) matter if you’re a citizen or not
[ edit: @DukeTrout beat me to it. tho i still think it’s important to point out that in the us, rights aren’t given. it’s all framed as protections from government, not something government gives to us ]
But if you’re a sovereign citizen, you think that the government has sold your soul to a cabal of international bankers (or something, I’m a bit hazy on the details), so why would you believe the government when they say you have rights?
To which the answer is; they’re irrational and I should stop worrying about why crazy people have crazy beliefs.
Human rights don’t exist as objective phenomena like sunlight or gravity. They clearly are an artefact of culture and civilisation. So is government. Cultures with high regard for human rights tend to produce governments with high regard for human rights and enshrine both within the rule of law.
Back in Utah, Melissa Thomson had grown up in a Mormon home and married at 22; she worked in banking and, in her spare time, doted on her pedigreed cats, even serving as treasurer of the local Cat Fanciers group. […] Mr. Morton welcomed his new wife’s bushy-tailed Norwegian forest cats — when a new litter arrived, more than a dozen scampered around the apartment — and in turn she oversaw the administrative side of being Sean David Morton. […] Ms. Morton’s pedigreed kittens, which sold for hundreds of dollars each, apparently kept them solvent.
Are we approaching a time when we must hesitate before disseminating a cat picture, out of fear that we may be fueling some unsavory cause? That will truly be the Internet’s darkest day.
i would argue they’re not phenomena – so comparing to physics is futile.
as far as “products of culture” – i dunno. “don’t abridge speech”, or something even more fundamental like “don’t torture people” – they’re different than laws like: “if you jaywalk you will be fined X dollars.”
they are restraints on the law, rather than applications of law. they’re negative space. like the air inside a bowl rather than the bowl itself. in that sense, they are saying where law can’t go.
since i’d agree that law is indeed the product of culture, it says, in affect: here’s what’s natural law, and not made law. it gives them the presumption of being intrinsic.
of course, the recognition of these intrinsic things – deciding where law can and cannot go; the carving out of the bowl if you will – is itself a human act. but, it gives it government and law an important philosophical underpinning.
to take intrinsic rights away – all the way from killing or torturing (ex. in war), to searching someone’s phone you – government has to go a further distance ( in theory ) to avoid prosecution. and that’s a very good thing.
[ this is why the right to bear arms is not about owning some specific type of gun. it’s about the freedom to self-organize for the sake of collective protection. just don’t tell the nra or their heads will explode. hmm… actually. tell the nra. ]
I don’t disagree exactly, but even the text of the Declaration of Independence explicitly states that the Founders considered certain rights as the inalienable birthright of humanity, regardless of government:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
So in the view of the people who later wrote the Constitution, that document existed to enshrine and protect rights that they believed were intrinsic to the human condition. (Except for all the people who were legally less-than-human of course.)
