Millions for defense, but not one penny for tribute!
But like the Exception Thread, these people are “special”, and the rest of us should make exceptions for them!
People who try this crap definitely deserve a place in Chimera’s Home for the Terminally Stupid.
From the link;
“Some people believe with great fervor preposterous things that just happen to coincide with their self-interest.” Judge Frank Easterbrook, Coleman v. CIR (7th Cir 1986)
The courts are FICTION.
Also, the guys that physically eject you from your house are FICTIONAL. As are the handcuffs, the walls of your cell etc. They are all FICTIONAL. And consequently can be ignored. The only real things are WHAT is your own HEAD.
the part about “lawfully” not paying debts is BS - you better believe it that the bank will find a way to enforce their God-given right to be secure in their property.
As for the idea of becoming more self-sufficient and independent from the economic and financial system of today, yes, that has a lot of merit. And guess why Obama administration is so busy passing the so-called “universal healthcare” with universal flat per capita tax to pay for it, huh? That’s why, to make sure that you cannot just drop out and scrounge on the margins. The big idea is to force you to work in the formal (and increasingly tyrannically regulated) economy whether you want it or not. Or, if you cannot find any such work, to become slav… err, ward of the state.
:: shakes fist ::
Dammit, Chimera! I’m always the first to post that quotation in threads like this! :mad: 
Trying to give a more substantive answer to the OP: the “Freeman” opt-out idea (also called the “sovereign citizen movement”) has been floating around in various forms for over thirty years, with no success. Governments have jurisdiction over everyone within their territory (subject to minor exceptions, such as diplomatic personnel from other countries). Attempts by people to deny that jurisdiction and assert their “personal sovereignty” have not been successful, and have in some cases have resulted in serious jail time.
One of the most notable examples of an attempt to set up a “Freeman” community, denying the authority of state and federal governments, was the Justus Township set up by the Freemen of Montana in 1996. That resulted in an 81 day long standoff with the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. The main leader of the movement is currently serving a 22 year federal sentence for 25 convictions. He’s in the Colorado “Supermax” penitentiary. I think some of the others involved also got convicted, although not such heavy sentences.
More recently, there were the Browns in New Hampshire. They are a husband and wife couple who became convinced that they were individual sovereigns and not subject to federal law, notably income tax. They skipped out on pending income tax proceedings, and holed up in their concrete home in the country. After a standoff that lasted about half a year in 2007, they were captured by federal law enforcement without injury. At trial on their charges, they tried to assert that the United States had no jurisdiction over them. How’d that turn out for them? Not well:
A third example is Wesley Snipes, the movie star. He took tax advice from some sovereign citizens who held themselves out as experts in helping to make income immune from (in their view) illegitimate federal taxes. Snipes shouldn’t have followed their advice: he’s been convicted for tax misdemeanours and is facing a three year federal jail sentence (currently on appeal, so he’s not served any real time as yet).
Snipes tried to rely on the freeman/sovereign citizen arguments, according to the sentencing memorandum filed by the federal prosecutors:
Neither the jury nor the judge bought the argument that you can assert immunity from federal law.
I would say that the freeman / sovereign citizen legal arguments are classic examples of a “magic words” view of the law - that unknown to most people, there are certain “magic words” and that if you say them correctly, in just the right order and circumstances, POOF, the government loses all authority over them. It’s just as much a fairy tale as Cinderella’s slipper and Prince Charming.
For example, the OP refers to the difference between “laws” and “statutes”, and “unlawful” and “illegal”. Although there may in some cases be some slight technical differences between those pairs of words, there’s nothing in them that leads to the conclusion that an individual is immune from laws. A fixation on those types of minor differences leading to the POOF moment is one of the hallmarks of the sovereign citizens.
As always, this post is not intended as legal advice, but just a general discussion on a legal issue of public interest. Anyone who really wants to try these types of arguments should talk to a lawyer.
Actually, getting put in jail is sort of similar to opting out of society. You don’t have to pay taxes, you can go around killing everyone and all it means is more time in jail, etc. Outside of the rules on the time you have to be in your cell, it’s an anarchists heaven.
During my time with Goliath National Bank, I was in the department charged with holding funds in customer’s accounts in response to government levies and orders from courts. We received letters from customer’s telling us why we could not do what we did, and many of them used this reasoning (legal fiction, capitalized name, etc).
I can assure you that we treated those letters with every bit of seriousness that they demanded. I loved getting those letters, they brightened up what was an otherwise very dull job.
At best (or rather at worst), you might end up stateless (most probably unwillingly), but you’ll still have to abide by the laws of the country you’re residing in. Maybe it’s possible in these cases to avoid some obligations (military draft, maybe in some cases paying taxes?), probably at the expense of many rights (possibly not being able to work legally, no free medical care in countries where there’s UHC…).
There’s no way to “opt out”, and every single inch of land except Antarctica belongs to some country. So apart from living in a ship in the middle of an ocean…
The part of all this that confuses me is how these folks imagine that their immunity continues when they drive into town? I could understand how one might convince one’s self that it’s ok to drive an unliscened truck aorund on one’s own farm. In fact, I’m betting this is legal in many places.
But once you turn out of the driveway and head into town, driving on the roads you didn’t pay taxes to maintain, in a vehicle you didn’t register in accordance with the local laws/statutes, without having personally registered as an operator of a motor vehicle in that territory, how could you possibly imagine that you’d be safe doing that?
And if you deny that you are a US citizen, doesn’t that make you an illegal alien, subject to deportation by the INS?
AFAIK this is legal everywhere. If you have private property, you can drive your vehicle on it to your heart’s content (subject to noise and pollution and stupidity complaints from the neighbors). Many people got their start driving cars on farm-land, quarry floors and long driveways.
You licence the vehicle so that you can drive it on a public road.
You’re trying to make this logical. It’s not logical. These people are insane. They’re delusional. It’s a weird little rabbithole all its own…the more you try to impose logic on the plot, the less things fit together.
Of course it doesn’t work. Thing is, you’re perfectly free to view the United States Government as an illegal tyranny. But when you declare the US Government to be a tyranny, you shouldn’t then be suprised when that tyranny unfairly uses tyrannical methods to squash you like a bug.
If Saddam Hussein decided he didn’t like the looks of you, he’d send his goons over, they’d snatch you and put a bullet in the back of your head. I suppose you could point out to Saddam’s goons that you were a free and sovreign citizen of the universe, and his laws didn’t apply to you. That would give them a laugh, wouldn’t it?
The fact is, the cops and judges and lawyers and banks all believe in the law, and they aren’t going to listen when you explain that you don’t have to follow their laws. You can argue that you shouldn’t have to follow those laws, and you may be right, but you can’t argue that the cops are going to let you go when you break the law, because in fact, they don’t let you go. They arrest you and send you to jail. That may be fascism, but that’s what they do. They don’t listen when you say the magic words. That might make them fascists, but you’ll be the one in jail.
The laws apply to everyone because even the so-called “freemen” benefit from laws (the ones that regulate roads, utilities, ability to get food, etc) and cannot live without other people who do follow the law. Nobody lives in a vacuum and the majority elect to live with laws so the “freemen” are stuck with them too.
That’s not true at all.
You kill somebody in prison and we take away your TV privileges.
Quite far, if you’re Superman.
Otherwise, not so much.
How much can you (legally) avoid government intervention by moving out to the sticks and living off your own land? Are there parts of the country where you can own property without property taxes? If you could live off of that property, you wouldn’t have to worry about income or sales tax. And (I’m stretching here…) do you have to worry about the health insurance requirement if you don’t have to file income taxes?
Oy. In one of those, someone related an anecdote about Child Protective Services removing kids from the home and said after a few days CPS returned the kids who didn’t have birth certificates, because they didn’t have authority over them.
Except, no. In reality, lack of a birth certificate is not going to keep CPS from taking your kids away. These guys have a weird magical thinking–that the vampires can only enter your house if you invite them in. Accidentally invite them in and they’ll come in and feed on your flesh, but invoke the correct words and they’ll flee. The cops will arrest and abuse you if you have a social security number, but will be helpless if you don’t. There’s a difference between a human being and a person, and the government doesn’t have any authority over human beings, only over fictitious persons. And on and on.
It doesn’t make any sense. If the fascists tell the bank to hand over your money, the bank hands over the money. If the fascists tell the cops to put you in jail, they’ll put you in jail. If the fascists tell the prison guards to take you out back and shoot you in the head, they’ll shoot you in the head.