As I understand it, the “travelling/driving” distinction hinges on one edition of Black’s Law Dictionary that used the word “employ” in its definition of “driver”.
I have to figure along similar lines there’s some legal style guide out there that suggests legal persons (i.e. corporations, foundations, etc.) should have their names written IN CAPITAL LETTERS to try to distinguish them from natural persons (i.e. human beings), and this is the source of all the sovcit uppercase/lowercase bullshit, in which they assume that if their names are written in capitals then by definition the document cannot refer to them but some fictional version of them, and let the fictional version pay the fine or the civil judgement or child support or whatever.
I absolutely do understand why most of them do what they do, and it has nothing to do with civil disobedience. Most SovCits are deadbeats and low level lawbreakers who are grasping onto the sovereign citizen straw as a way of trying to avoid their petty troubles.
That was really painful to watch. I feel sorry for all involved. Even the girl. She obviously was terrified out of her mind that the police were going to carry her off to some black site never to be heard from again.
I’m sure sovereign citizens believe they’re bucking the system. But they’re not. The “successful” ones are the ones who manage to avoid the system. In any encounter with the system, sovereign citizens lose and the system wins.
In fact, it is the exact definitional opposite of civil disobedience.
People engaging in civil disobedience know they are breaking what they consider to be an unjust law and are willing to accept the consequences of their actions.
Sovereign citizens don’t believe in laws or the legitimacy of governments and believe their magic sayings will protect them from any consequences.
There may not be two more dissimilar systems of thought in the universe.
Expanding on this–
Possibly the most bizarre part of the whole bizarre thing is that many of them treat the Uniform Commercial Code as if it were the Constitution.
Look, they’re dumb. Like really really dumb. The 16% of the population with IQs between 55 and 85 dumb.
They have a fundamentally distorted and stupid-fied idea of how the Government and the world work that is based in part on how movies portray the world with secret societies and government agencies and fringe conspiracy theories.
They also don’t fundamentally grasp The Law and/or how Language works, because they have this teaching that if you say the right magic words, the right phrase, notice the same semi-common courtroom features, write the correct public notices, then you magically don’t have to do anything that court or the police tell you to do. You’re Sovereign over yourself, a free person.
What do they get? In on “the secret”. Power over their lives when they otherwise felt completely powerless due to the government conspiracies they believe. They get to be The Special People The Government Can’t Touch.
I wish anti-vaxxers, creationist, moon hoaxers, birthers, and sovereign citizens were stupid but I don’t believe that’s the case. It takes a certain amount of intelligence to construct that fundamentally distorted idea of how the world works. I honestly don’t believe a stupid person could come up with the Redemption Movement, come up with reasons why the 14th Amendment isn’t valid, the idea of fictitious persons versus sovereign persons, file false liens, or commit insurance fraud to the tune of millions of dollars. They might be delusional but they’re not stupid. They’d be a lot easier to deal with if they were dumb.
Most of these people don’t come up with their own ideas. They just adopt crazy ideas that other people came up with. And when you consider some of these people are willing to pay for crazy ideas, you have to suspect that many of the people who came up with them don’t believe the ideas they’re selling.
Black’s, yes, but the FOTL/SovCit distinction is between the 2nd and 6th editions. Note that there really is no distinction, but even among FOTLs/SovCits, I’ve noticed dissent as to which edition is legally correct.
Surprise, FOTL/SovCits! Any edition of Black’s is not legally-correct in the sense that it is accepted as good law anywhere in the common law world. It is only a dictionary, and no more useful in the courtroom than Merriam-Webster or the Oxford English Dictionary would be.
What do FOTLs/SovCits get out of all their nonsense? The opportunity to pay hundreds, or maybe thousands, to an OPCA guru, who gladly pockets their money; while they ineffectually cite Magna Carta to a cop at a traffic stop. Et cetera.
Most of them have room-temperature IQs, but the gurus are the ones selling the stuff, not the ones buying it, and the gurus are the only ones who have to make stuff up.
Shrout sold the ideology and practiced it. I don’t know if he came up with anything original, but some of the scammers are just as dumb as their marks, at least when it comes to dealing with the government.
We have a lot of these nutballs in my area. Of course, this region seems to draw all sorts of semi-related nutballs. We have the moronic Redoubt movement folks. We have a resurgence of white supremecy (this is the heart of what was Aryan Nations). We have folks that defend the moronic Bundy escapades. Hell, in Spokane Valley they even have a state elected Rep that supports pretty much all of this (he went to Malheur) and is leading the charge to form a new state named Liberty, which will become a white utopia (look up Matt Shea if you want to learn more). Lifted pickup trucks with huge Gadsden, rebel and US flags flying from the bed are common.
I don’t know what they get out of it. I think they all live in this odd fantasy world where stockpiling 50K 223 rounds wins you an entry into white heaven.
No, you are wrong. There is no evidence what you are saying is true.
The capacity of people, even very intelligent people, to believe in nonsense and lunacy is truly limitless. You can take any stupidity and you will find that people with perfectly normal, even above average IQs are taken in by it. Pyramid schemes? Anti-vaxx nonsense? Nigerian email scams? People with graduate degrees fall for all that shit.
they also claim something about a US flag with the gold fringe on it . Either the fringe means it’s not a legit flag or it is legit , cannot recall which one.
I mentioned this thread and was informed there are German sort-of SCs who believe the Weimar Republic never actually ended or something: Reichsbürger movement - Wikipedia