Have you heard about sovereign individuals announcing themselves to be above any state or country law? See for example this Forbes article ‘What is a Sovereign Citizen?‘, and a latest example at municipal level: ‘A California city council voted to make itself a ‘Constitutional Republic City’ to skirt state and federal orders it doesn’t want to enforce‘.
It has become a trend, inspired by individualism and often by anarchism thought about the fact that government is superfluous. “The short answer: a sovereign citizen is someone who believes that he or she is above all laws.” The longer answer: finding some basis to avoid applying some law or regulation you don’t like. People involved are often close to conspiracy theory and anarchistic movements.
Still, in the US, “The sovereign citizen movement is big and is growing fast, thanks to the Internet. There are an estimated 300,000 people in the movement, and approximately one third of these are what I would call hard-core believers – people willing to act on their beliefs rather than simply walk away.” It has become a concern and a trend, because it is so easy to declare oneself no obeying to certain laws you don’t like!
You can’t pick and choose the laws you are willing to obey and those you don’t. We all participate in a social construct and much of our wealth and peace is based on the addition of laws and regulations over the year. We also all belong to a country, a municipality. If we want to change something, in our democratic societies we can campaign for it. It is a bit easy to declare oneself a sovereign citizen to do as you like.
