FBI targets "Sovereign Citizens"

reply to post by Janky Red


I understand your dis-ease with extremes Janky, and I do not like to view myself as an "extremist", but in all honesty, it seems I do hover around the extremes of an issue rather than find some comfortable middle ground. Indeed, I have come to the conclusion that compromise is, by and large, a bad idea. I offer as evidence the three-fifths compromise that has forever stained our Constitution. This horrid piece of writing not only deigned to diminish the humanity of a certain race, it did so in order to justify the legality of slavery, and this compromise only succeeded in leading our country to Civil War. Some compromise.

As much as I understand the ill at ease that comes with being confronted with those who take extreme views, I also very much understand the need for extreme views. If slavery represents one extreme, and freedom the other, is the middle ground truly all that comfortable? Do we compromise freedom just for the sake of comfort, and maintaining a sort of status quo that would view freedom as something granted by institutions that could never exist without the consent of those who built it and maintain it? When it comes to freedom, and if that be the extreme polar opposite of slavery, is such an extreme truly all that bad?

Few demand I re-think my own positions as often as you do, and for this I am truly grateful, for even if I do decide to hold the extreme view afterward, I do so with a better understanding of why I do.

I would like to explain:

The political philosophy of most Sovereigns is rooted in a rejection of either the social contract or the methods by which it is implemented. What most don't know or understand is that the social contract is just one of many theories put forth since the beginning of civilization to justify and/or explain the subjection which forms the human base of all states. It also is just a theory, not in the scientific sense but the drastically weaker philosophical one. In a republican government - one which has sought to justify its existence and actions legally, it is reasonable to hold its subjection policy (derived from the social contract) to the same legal standard as any of its other policies or practices - that is, to seek the legalistic basis for that policy.

That is was Sovereigns have done in demanding to know from where their respective governments (there are Sovereignty movements outside of the US) claim to derive their authority to subject and in challenging the legal and politico-philosophical status thereof. If a government's subjection policy (the interpretation of the social contract it has chosen to justify it's guidelines for natural-born citizenship) can be shown to be below the legal standard for contracts, or more generally incompatible/inconsistent with the legal framework of that government, it stands to reason that it can be challenged like any other government policy or practice.

Social contract theory has been quite extensively challenged by many - philosophers, political philosophers, legal philosophers, libertarian and anarchist writers, citizens, et al.

If you're interested in this dark chasm of legal and political philosophy I recommend the Discourse of Voluntary Servitude and The Constitution of No Authority to start off with. It is a fascinating subject that receives literally no attention in our education, intellectual circles, books, anywhere.