they do have a point in saying “fuck you” to the authority.
The don’t say “fuck you” though - they say “gotcha!”. The way I understand it, the Sovereign Citizens Movement is a cargo cult. They hear about all the billionaires who barely pay taxes thanks to clever accounting and all the criminals who escape punishment on technicalities, and figure that “if the law can be manipulated - why can’t we manipulate it?”
Do they “have a point”? Maybe, in the same way alchemy had a point that lead and gold are made of the same fundamental matter and therefore one can be converted to the other. In the same way humoralist medicine had a point that the human body has various substances that must be balanced to maintain health. They’ve all had a point in that they’ve managed to glimpse at the nature of the problem - and they all fail by grossly underestimating the actual complexity of the model and the amount of effort, resources and expertise required to achieve their goals.
I wouldn’t be surprised if an expert legal team could achieve some of the things SovCits are trying to achieve. But that would require lots of hard work from them, and SovCits have managed to convince themselves that all it takes is a few magic phrases. I leave it to anthropologists to figure out how they came to think they could so easily figure out what these magic phrases are.
The way I understand it, the Sovereign Citizens Movement is a cargo cult. They hear about all the billionaires who barely pay taxes thanks to clever accounting and all the criminals who escape punishment on technicalities, and figure that “if the law can be manipulated - why can’t we manipulate it?”
Ah, there is that, yes. There are people who believe that law is some magic where they can prove anything if they know it well enough and know some secrets.
It’s not a bad belief, frankly. They want to prove something they consider right, so they believe the law would be on their side if they worked hard enough. Just naive, but not worth ridicule.
In the sense that its connection to justice is not 1-to-1 they are right, but there are no secrets that bend it, just raw real power which a sovereign citizen doesn’t possess.
I wouldn’t be surprised if an expert legal team could achieve some of the things SovCits are trying to achieve. But that would require lots of hard work from them, and SovCits have managed to convince themselves that all it takes is a few magic phrases. I leave it to anthropologists to figure out how they came to think they could so easily figure out what these magic phrases are.
Oh, you already said that.
I don’t know what you mean by “figure out” (as in what else there is to figure out), but this is indeed a common enough plot point in fairy tales.
I was talking about the emotional part where right and common sense matter more than the law. The law is supported by force, so it’s morally acceptable to use force to protect right and common sense against it. Oh, well, speaking of USA, that’s in their Constitution anyway, and what’s more important, those founding fathers they like to mention have many times said that this is a natural principle and the Constitution doesn’t create or support it, just mentions it.
The don’t say “fuck you” though - they say “gotcha!”. The way I understand it, the Sovereign Citizens Movement is a cargo cult. They hear about all the billionaires who barely pay taxes thanks to clever accounting and all the criminals who escape punishment on technicalities, and figure that “if the law can be manipulated - why can’t we manipulate it?”
Do they “have a point”? Maybe, in the same way alchemy had a point that lead and gold are made of the same fundamental matter and therefore one can be converted to the other. In the same way humoralist medicine had a point that the human body has various substances that must be balanced to maintain health. They’ve all had a point in that they’ve managed to glimpse at the nature of the problem - and they all fail by grossly underestimating the actual complexity of the model and the amount of effort, resources and expertise required to achieve their goals.
I wouldn’t be surprised if an expert legal team could achieve some of the things SovCits are trying to achieve. But that would require lots of hard work from them, and SovCits have managed to convince themselves that all it takes is a few magic phrases. I leave it to anthropologists to figure out how they came to think they could so easily figure out what these magic phrases are.
Ah, there is that, yes. There are people who believe that law is some magic where they can prove anything if they know it well enough and know some secrets.
It’s not a bad belief, frankly. They want to prove something they consider right, so they believe the law would be on their side if they worked hard enough. Just naive, but not worth ridicule.
In the sense that its connection to justice is not 1-to-1 they are right, but there are no secrets that bend it, just raw real power which a sovereign citizen doesn’t possess.
Oh, you already said that.
I don’t know what you mean by “figure out” (as in what else there is to figure out), but this is indeed a common enough plot point in fairy tales.
I was talking about the emotional part where right and common sense matter more than the law. The law is supported by force, so it’s morally acceptable to use force to protect right and common sense against it. Oh, well, speaking of USA, that’s in their Constitution anyway, and what’s more important, those founding fathers they like to mention have many times said that this is a natural principle and the Constitution doesn’t create or support it, just mentions it.