I wish there was a place these people could go. We could call it Wacktopia or Nuttistan. It needs to be in a somewhat unstable area of the world so that they aren’t reaping the benefits of surrounding tax-payers. It would be interesting to watch it crash and burn.
There was an interesting article in the New York Times yesterday about the Freegan movement, which is sort of the modern version of the Hippies. Young people who drop out of society and try to avoid using money. Here is a link to the story: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/magazine/06Squatters-t.html
I had thought this was what the OP was talking about, but of course a bunch of kids living by Dumpster-diving is way more rational than the Freemen.
in my day 10 years ago at a hippie college- “Freegans” were people who would only eat meat that was stolen. The idea tht if meat production became unprofitable, there would be less killing of animals. Times have changed.
I thought that famous quote was appropriate too, and would have posted it if someone else hadn’t.
There’s another one around which I can’t quite remember the exact wording to. Something like, “Some people believe that if they only can recite the special magic phrase, they can get all sorts of goodies – like a get out of jail free card.”
I love how they all say “I showed my notarized gibberish to the cop and he immediately reacted” blah blah blah. Well of course. They whip out the document the officer looks at it and thinks to himself, “holy shit, I’m dealing with a guy who’s completely fucking insane, better be careful.” But the guy still goes to jail in the end.
I’m a public defender. We get a lot of “jail mail” with this stuff in it. People who want us to file to quash an indictment because it had their name in all caps or something. It seems to come in waves, like a freeman gets locked up and contaminates the whole jail with this ridiculousness and then we get a hail of letters saying the same thing.
As far as I can tell, having dealt with some of these folks, they take an extreme libertarian view of law. They appear to recognize only three types of law:
- Expansive views of property law
- Limited tort/criminal law
- Contract law.
That’s it.
Property law is pretty clear - except they don’t accept the idea of other parties having any claim on their own property via security interests, such as mortgages.
For them, tort-criminal law is based on personal bodily integrity - so they accept that if you physically hurt someone else, you may be liable to them, or to criminal sanctions. However, as far as I can tell, they view tort & criminal law as limited only to things like assault or theft.
Contracts are pretty clear, but what it means for them is that as sovereigns, they are only bound by legal agreements that they choose to enter into. And for them, statutes are a form of contract. They view all statutes as an offer by the government. If you decline the offer, you’re not bound by the statute.
(This is their take on the distinction between law and statute that the OP mentions.)
So for them, there is no requirement to licence a car, unless you enter into a contract with the government by voluntarily doing so. If you choose not to do so, the offence provisions of the statute have no force or effect, since those are simply part of a contract offered by the government, which you’ve declined. Since contract law is always consensual, in their view they can’t be forced to licence their car.
It gets even weirder the more you delve into it, but that’s my take on the materials I’ve seen from them over the years.
Oh, and the citizenship thing - there’s all sorts of ways they argue against citizenship triggering an obligation to comply with the laws. One of the most frequent is that the federal government only has jurisdiction over aliens, corporations, and people living on federal districts (like D.C. or a military base). If you don’t fit those categories, you’re a US citizen, but not subject to federal law.
Another is that they deny there’s any such thing as US citizenship any more, since Roosevelt, when he took the US off the gold standard, essentially sold the United States to a new corporation, United States Inc., run by the international bankers, and since the U.S. as founded by the founding fathers no longer exists, there are no longer any U.S. citizens. (If you get a whiff of anti-Semitism out of that summary, you’re not alone.) If you want to contract with U.S. Inc. by agreeing to be bound by the corporation’s bylaws, that may bring you under the authority of U.S. Inc., but there’s no obligation to do so. The Uniform Commercial Code often wanders into these types of discussions, as the means by which U.S. Inc. tries to oppress the populace (but of course, if you really know the magic words embedded in the UCC, you can use it to free yourself of contractual liability to U.S. Inc.)
Still others distinguish between true-born U.S. Citizens, which is what the founding fathers envisaged, and 14th Amendment citizens, who wouldn’t be citizens but for the constitutional amendment. 14th Amendment citizens (African-Americans, American Indians and immigrants) are of course fully subject to the laws of the United States, but true-born citizens are fully sovereign, etc.
It goes on and on, but the quotation from Easterbrook J.A. really sums it all up.
You could probably avoid most taxes if you live in a self-sufficient homestead. Have no cash income and you avoid income and sales taxes.
The remaining issue is property tax (which has nothing to with the federal government as it’s assessed on the local level). A quick online search indicates that there are no areas in the United States with no property taxes. But there are areas where there are exemptions for homesteads or low-income property owners. So it might be possible to find a situation where you’d pay no taxes.
But that’s only talking about taxes. None of this gives you any immunity from the law.
Okay, so I wanted to see what the OP was all about, I went poking around at that first site, by Veronica Chapman – excuse me, “Veronica, of the Chapman family (as commonly called)”.
You see, apparently there is no real evidence you are who you think you are. I mean, your parents might have told you your name was “Veronica Chapman”, they might have put that name on a birth certificate, but they can’t prove that’s who you are, only what you are commonly called. You see, you are a “flesh and blood human being, with a living soul,” so you are only “commonly called” whatever your name is. So as a FreeMan, you can establish that you will only respond to whatever.
Which is just preposterous. Okay, so you are “commonly called Veronica”. Well, you are also “commonly called Ms. Chapman” and “commonly called VERONICA CHAPMAN”, so really there is no justification for this giving you any out.
Had to poke around a bit. I saw this:
Okay fine. Then saw this:
Cool. Followed the link:
That’s right, the online book is now only available in print, and not free, but for a price. :smack:
Libre said:
I was curious about this, too. I mean, what is the difference between “illegal” and “unlawful”?
Apparently all of this hangs on a convoluted use of “Common Law” as opposed to statutory law. Apparently things like taxes and vehicle registration and licenses and such are all statues created by governments, but Common Law precedes them and has independent and some sort of undefined absolute authority.
Which is especially amusing, because she doesn’t make any claim to authority from God.
http://www.fmotl.com/BackToSquare1.htm
That last appears to be part of her giving religious people allowance to be religious, but trying to justify why her arguments all omit God references, which she says that some of her material is from other sources:
http://www.fmotl.com/Fundamentals.htm#BM1
Apparently a lot of her “magic words” relate to some peculiar understanding of what it takes [del]legally[/del] lawfully for a a contract to be valid, including the interpretation that a contract must only be between living human beings with souls. States and corporations and governments do not have the power to create binding contracts, only human beings do.
The other element that is preposterous is trying to equate load documents with checks, and declaring that when you sign a loan document, what you are really doing is writing a check that the lending agent then files to the government treasury and they pay out, so by writing the check to that lending agent, you have paid them.
http://www.fmotl.com/LoansScam.htm
Where that organisation came up with the money and why they would pay out for your check when you have no money behind it is a mystery.
Johnny L.A. said:
By taking out a loan, what you have done is written a check to the bank, promising them money. They take your check to the government issuing house (treasury?), and then they get your money from the treasury. So now they give you the money they got from the treasury (that was somehow already yours) and then expect you to pay it back to them with interest.
The money was created by you telling the treasury that you wanted to spend it, or something.
RadicalPi said:
Her arguments spin on a different point. Instead, the Government only has the ability to define rules for the people who contractually agree to participate in that club under those rules. If you do not wish to be a member of that club, you can opt out and thereby be exempt, just like if you don’t want to be a member of, for instance, the 4 H Club, you can opt not to be bound by 4 H rules. Whereas the Common Law extends outside of governments.
Although who is able to be enforce the Common Law is not addressed, either.
Oakminster said:
“Paying taxes is by definition not leaving you alone.” 
I’ve called it the “secret law” belief. The idea is that there are laws that say things like bank loans are invalid if your name is spelled in capital letters or courts can’t sentence you if their flag has gold braid. Nobody knows where these laws came from but they exist somehow. And the government can’t change them - Congress, which supposedly has the power to enact laws, for some reason can’t just pass a law declaring capital letters and gold braids are legal. So all the government can do is hide these laws and hope nobody finds out about them.
It would gradually develop rules and they’d end up where they are now. These people don’t really want to live as freemen, it would be much much harder than they think. They want the benefits of a civilised society, just not the detriments, is my guess.
THAT explains a lot. Thanks. The jailbirds also cite the UCC to try and quash prosecutions. Never really understood why the UCC had anything to do with it.
You can scratch Canada off your list. Believe it or not, the law in Canada really is the law, and such quackery as your links put forth doesn not apply here in the Great White.
See Debunking Tax Myths by our friends at the Canada Revenue Agency. I do freely admit though that Americans are much more imaginative than we are when it comes to dreaming up loopholes!
It probably wouldn’t get that far because they’d end up fighting over what rules to enforce. What it really comes down to (as you alluded and Easterbrook so elegantly expressed) is that these people don’t want the rules to apply to them. I remember hearing about a hard-core libertarian group that tried to start a town in some remote area of (I believe) Texas. It fell apart because they couldn’t agree on dealing with sewerage.
Hell, there are still lots of places that you needn’t even own land; you can simply live out in the wilderness. If you don’t mind being Grizzly Adams and are smart enough to scout out the right site you could live undisturbed by the government for the rest of your days.
Just tell them you don’t have to pay taxes because Ohio isn’t a province.
Being Grizzly Adams is easy. Where the artistry (or ethnic heritage) comes in is having the gub’mint pay you while you are doing your thing.
You know it is interesting that the Op talks about “opting out” then talks about driving on *the public highways. *:dubious:
Nor even how to spell it.
True, but that doesn’t stop some folks in Canada from advancing these arguments, or home-grown variants of them. I’ve had paper cross my desk that refers to the Uniform Commercial Code as an attempt to get out from under Canadian laws, even though the UCC is purely an American legal document. :smack:
And, in place of the “Roosevelt sold the United States to the International Banks”, I’ve seen pleadings asserting that by passing the Statute of Westminster in 1931, the U.K. Parliament formally abandoned the ship Canada under admiralty laws, rendering it into an ownerless vessel, and therefore no law of Canada passed since 1931 has any force or effect.
Maybe these arguments haven’t made their way east yet, Muffin, but I’ve been seeing them here in Saskatchewan for several years, as have lawyers I’ve spoken to in Manitoba and Alberta.