So there’s been a group of people running around the United States for 30 years or so who call themselves Constitutionalists, among other things. They have – shall we say –quirky ideas about the rule of the law, the nature of the US constitution and of citizens’ rights within it.

My personal favorite of their claims is that – in their claiming, not mine – that I (meaning Politicalprof and people like me) are “sovereign citizens.” What this means in practice is that since people like me – white, male and property owning – were legally entitled to be citizens of the US before the US Constitution was created, we are “sovereign” – e.g., superior – to the Constitution. This means that I – meaning Politicalprof and people like me – have the personal right to reject or nullify laws that seem to us to intrude on our freedom since, obviously, we would never have consented to such laws in 1787. I am sovereign over the federal government, which cannot take away my rights as I define them.

Now, many of my sharp and sophisticated readers will be have their brows in a knot, going, “but, Politicalprof, what if you’re NOT a white male property owner? What if you’re a woman? Or a minority? Or an immigrant?” No worries: you are what is known as a “14th Amendment citizen.” That is, you are a citizen, but not a sovereign citizen. (Again, this is their argument, not mine.) Rather, you were granted citizenship by the 14th Amendment.

The distinction here is important: I was a citizen (allegedly) who could have made the Constitution, so my rights and liberties exist independent of the Constitution. Everyone else is a citizen as a result of the Constitution, and is bound therefore by its rules and limitations. In addition, we can take your citizenship and rights away through Constitutional changes, but we can never take mine away – as I define them – because people like me defined them in 1787.

Simple, huh? In any case, such persons are on the loose again. The anti-government fervor of the last years, mixed with the rise of a legalistic strain of libertarianism, has combined to make nonsense sound like Constitutional reasoning.

To wit, the post below. A group calling itself the “Republic for the united States of America” (the lowercase “u” matters) has decided that the United States you and I think of is not the real united States. More, they’ve decided they’ve recreated the real the united States. I am posting their words in full, cause hey: you need the full crazy.

Have fun!

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