# Is there any legitimacy to the Sovereign Citizen argument? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 7, 2017, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-legitimacy-to-the-sovereign-citizen-argument/786097 "2017-05-07T22:25:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 148
**Author:** ![SarahWitch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b782af/32.png) [@SarahWitch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SarahWitch)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2017, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-legitimacy-to-the-sovereign-citizen-argument/786097/148 "2017-11-25T20:01:39Z")
This is quibbling. The sole issue is national sovereignty of a individual nation-states, which the USA does not have over its member-states-- as the federal government _claims_. Nothing else matters. You’re confusing centralization, with _national sovereignty_– which the CSA states never ceded to the CSA Union, nor did did the CSA allege; indeed, that was the sole issue between the two Union, i.e. the USA claimed that the states formed a single nation-state, while the CSA states claimed they were always separate nation-states. That’s what it was ALL about. If the North admitted that the truth, that the states were sovereign nation-states, then there could have been no war; however charlatans fabricated many arguments to _deny_ this fact under color of law, from Jackson to Lincoln. Separate nation-states can form federal republics which can be as centralized as they _please_, without _forfeiting_ their status as separate nation-states; this can only be lost if they expressly _manifest_ such an act; and the American states never did that. That’s the confusion which plagues most people today, in claiming that USA’s common military, currency, whatever, _made_ the states into a single nation-state, by implication… when all that is pure _bunk_. It doesn’t work that way, for reasons I just stated. The Euro, the UN army, etc. did not make those nation-states into a _single_ nation-state-- but Hitler, Hussein and Hirohito \* claimed\* this in their various conquests, with the same legal validity as Lincoln-- i.e. none. Again, it can only happen by\* express action,\* since a nation-state is its own supreme ruler by law, in terms of _judging_ legal intent. Thus, nothing can be \*left \*to judgment in such a treaty which joins two or more nation-states as a single one. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-legitimacy-to-the-sovereign-citizen-argument/786097)._