Is that a woooooshing sound I hear?
A little one, yes.
“Don’t open up the cabin hatch
the air is sure to leave it
and air is very hard to catch
you never will retrieve it”
[Donovan]" Ah, but I may as well try and catch the wind…"[/Donovan]
After I watched the Mythbusters’ episode about escaping a car in the water, I got two for my car, one for each front seat. They’re minihammers that have the seat belt slicer as well as the punch tip. I keep them in the wells under the door handles.
I love Frank Hayes.
Well, obviously, me too.
Leslie Fish too.
I’ve been in filk circles with her-What a delightfully dangerous lady.
As the court held in Manashian, cited upthread:
“Defendant is a citizen of this state unless and until he establishes residency in another state, or in another country. He is a citizen of the United States unless and until he undertakes those steps provided under federal law for revocation of citizenship, and, incidentally, subjects himself to deportation. Sections 1229 and 1481, Title 8, U.S.Code; see also Afroyim v. Rusk (1967), 387 U.S. 253, 87 S.Ct. 1660, 18 L.Ed.2d 757. Clearly, defendant wishes to have his cake of citizenship and eat it too. He wishes to live in this state, drive on its roads, walk on its paths, be protected by its Constitution, laws, courts and officers, and enjoy all of its rights and blessings, while shirking its responsibilities-including the responsibility to pay his lawful debts. This is repugnant to both the letter and spirit of the law, and this the court will not permit him to do.”
My parents lived in South Florida for 30 years and my Mom’s biggest fear was having an accident and ending up in a canal/drainage ditch.
An old friend of my parents died when his car went off the road into a canal in New Orleans somewhere, though his wife survived. As I was told, the road ended at the ditch but was poorly marked, so he didn’t see where the road ended, and it was pouring down rain that night.
I did know a few SovCit types when I lived in Montana (granted, it was 50+ years ago). The general consensus was that the Constitution was never ratified, so any laws promulgated under it didn’t exist; therefore the citation to Manashian would be irrelevant.
(Most of them were of the opinion that the Articles of Confederation were still in effect. The one outlier held that the AoC were overridden once the Constitution was put up for ratification, meaning that the States were the highest governments. And since there could be no mechanism for creating new States, the “State of Montana” was a legal fiction that had no power over him.)
Did they, at any level, recognize that even if the Constitution wasn’t ratified, virtually every single person in the US from the president down acts as though it had been ratified, and thus pretending otherwise is not going to be very effective?
Let me guess. He’s in love with the Second Amendment, though.
In their minds — and I use the term loosely — everyone who “acts as though [the Constitution] had been ratified” (even though it may have included 99.999999% of the population) was wrong. They alone knew the Truth, and the Truth along with the proper pseudo-legalese mumbo-jumbo would Set Them Free.
Again, this was over 50 years ago, and I didn’t hang around with them all that much: even though I was a tad more progressive then than I am now, I couldn’t take them other than in small doses.
No need. Since he recognized no governmental authority, he wasn’t bound by even the current generous interpretations of the Second Amendment.
I was going towards the idea that sovcits are not the most logical folks on the planet and that one individual of your acquaintance might have contradictory and self-serving views.
That part, I understand–I mean, I pretty much already think that 90% of the population is wrong about something or other, so I can almost sympathize in that respect. What I don’t get is that they must recognize that they live in a world where all those other people still act and behave as if their “wrong” beliefs were true. They think all those laws on the books are still valid, and they’ll throw you in jail for violating them, and you’ll lose in court because the judge also thinks they’re valid.
The only way the mindset works is if it’s actually a giant conspiracy–that all the people in power actually do know that the laws are invalid, and that they’ll let you bypass them if you say the magic incantations. Trouble is, that doesn’t seem to work, either… perhaps the incantations are wrong, but they don’t even seem to admit that much.
The authority for any system of law comes from the barrel of a gun—IOW, if those who are equipped to enforce the law believe, for example, that the Constitution is the highest law of the land, then it is. Doesn’t even matter if it became law “illegally”; if the guys with the guns say so, and a large majority of the population agrees enough not to revolt, then it is reality.
I’m just agreeing with others in the thread. Even if the SovCits believe their nonsense is 100% right—hell, even if they are right—you’d think they’d see as a practical matter that’s irrelevant.
tl;dr: Sheesh!
Not quite.
Their nonsense is completely relelvant. As long as they do not somehow come to the attention of officialdom. Traditionally, for most of these folks, arguing with cops (or judges) is NOT the goal. It’s their last-ditch defense when their jig is up.
Their actual goal is to live their life “below the radar” where they simply never interact with officialdom at all. Not too different from how undocumented migrants try to live. Or organized crime figures. If you work at it, you can remain invisible for a long time enjoying all that sweet sweet freedom. maybe even your whole life.
What is new since the arrival of far-right internet extremism, is the new breed of SovCit who’s itching for a confrontation with officialdom. Those folks seem to be like the “true patriots”, convinced that a) government is evil, and b) they can help tip it over and replace it with something better. For the RW-besotted SovCit, that “something else” is “nothing”, whereas for the RW-besotted authoritarian, that “something else” is White Xian totalitarianism.