"Sovereign Citizens" (and other not-quite-so-extreme conservatives)

There recently was a segment on the TV Program "60 Minutes" (which I viewed online, as you can as well) about a group or movement called "sovereign citizens."* These individuals are somewhat like some of the extreme right-wing militia groups we've got in the US. Based on erroneous ideas about the philosophies that prevailed in the late eighteenth century, they question the legitimacy of the US government as it currently exists. They refuse to acknowledge the authority of the government, or the police, over them. They won't carry driver's licenses. They draw up documents declaring they are "sovereign," so in effect each of these sovereign citizens is his own country. They believe--and this is downright silly--that if they draft these documents in a certain way—for example, putting the text diagonally across the page, or writing with orange crayon or signing with a fingerprint in blood--that this makes their sovereignty documents valid and they can't be challenged.

These people are scary, especially when you combine their extremist ideas with the wide availability of guns—and even assault weapons—in America. One sovereign citizen who was profiled on the program was stopped, along with his son, by police for a traffic violation. The man and his son opened fire with assault weapons—getting off something like 22 shots. A police officer was killed and I think both the sovereign citizen and his son were killed.

People who consider themselves sovereign citizens are estimated to number as many as 300,000. This is scary but of course it's only one American in 1,000. So hopefully most Americans would see these people as extremists and wack jobs. Still, they're only one or two steps farther to the right than some people I have known and talked to.

Some of the latter have told me they don't feel they should have to pay taxes. Such people need to simply read our Constitution, where Article 8 clearly gives Congress the power to impose taxes.

A "no taxes at all" view is extreme, still; but some would simply say they are loath to see their taxes ultimately benefit (or, in their minds, be paid to) any less fortunate individual. I could understand the conservative "no tax money of mine to help the less fortunate" position if their argument went something like, "Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs didn't work. Rather than throw money at social problems like urban poverty, let's wait until they're better understood, and/or we know what sort of measures work." But their argument is simply, "It's their [the people needing assistance] fault that they are in the situation they're in." I guess if I objected, "What about victims of hurricanes, tornadoes, floods. . . ?" they'd reply, "Well, it's their fault for living in the wrong place."
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*If you go to youtube.com and search for "sovereign citizens," about 128 listings will appear, many of them from the viewpoint of the sovereign citizens themselves, who feel they are persecuted when the government lists them as terrorists. Paranoia is one element of the whole phenomenon of the sovereign citizens.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein