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General FOTL/Soverign Citizen Discussion Thread

Man charged with issuing more than $100 trillion in fake finance documents goes to trial

Winston Shrout, a white-haired 69-year-old with a slight Southern drawl, hobbled to the lectern with the help of a cane and addressed a federal jury Tuesday afternoon.

He spoke of his upbringing in Kentucky and called himself an "eighth-generation hillbilly.'' He described his college training in psychology, four years of service in the Marine Corps and his respect for the American flag.

He called the government's allegations that he defrauded U.S. financial institutions by issuing hundreds of bogus documents as legal tender and failing to file six years of income tax returns "not very accurate.''

Shrout, who has a following as an anti-government sovereign citizen, said he caused no one harm.

"The things I did are in fact lawful, and I did them in an effort to assist commerce,'' he said, claiming he had authority to issue the documents in question...

In 2011, Shrout sent by FedEx a package to a bank in Chicago called American Metro Bank. It contained 1,000 "International Bills of Exchange,'' each supposedly worth $1 trillion. With the mailing were instructions on how the bank should process them and pledges that they would be honored by the Treasury, according to prosecutors.

Bank vice president Bill McGrath is expected to testify that it took considerable time for him to determine that the documents were bogus before he sent them back to Shrout...
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http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2017/04/man_charged_with_issuing_more.html
 
Under the law in the United States, the term, "sovereign" means "the government".

Under the law in the United States, the term, "sovereign" does not mean an "individual".

Under the law in the United States, "WE [a PLURAL term] the PEOPLE [also a PLURAL term]" COLLECTIVELY, AS A WHOLE, in the form of our ELECTED government are "sovereign".

But, under the law in the United States, no "INDIVIDUAL" (a SINGULAR term) can be "sovereign" because no "individual" is the ELECTED government of "We the People" COLLECTIVELY, AS A WHOLE.

That means that the "sovereign citizen" movement and the belief system that surrounds it is largely the result of the inability of amateur legal theorists to distinguish between SINGULAR and PLURAL terms.

The same is true of other legal terms and phrases.

Take the phrases, "We the People" and "consent of the governed", for example.

BOTH of these two legal phrases are PLURAL in nature, not SINGULAR.

"We [a PLURAL term] the People [also a PLURAL term]" refers to ALL OF THE PEOPLE COLLECTIVELY, AS A WHOLE, IN THE FORM OF THE ELECTED GOVERNMENT of "We the People", speaking with a single voice (also called the "state").

But, amateur legal theorists mistakenly interpret the legal phrase, "We the People" to refer to each, single, individual person INDIVIDUALLY (NOT COLLECTIVELY, AS A WHOLE).

The same is true of the legal phrase, "consent of the GOVERNED". The term, "GOVERNED" IS A PLURAL TERM (because ALL OF US are "governed") and refers to ALL OF THE PEOPLE COLLECTIVELY, AS A WHOLE. in the form of the ELECTED government of "We the People" (also called the "state").

But, amateur legal theorists mistakenly interpret the term,"GOVERNED", to refer to each, single, individual person INDIVIDUALLY.

As a result of these mistakes, amateur legal theorists mistakenly believe that the state ("We the People" speaking through our ELECTED representatives) need the INDIVIDUAL'S "CONSENT" to the state's jurisdiction and to the state's laws.

But, this is not so. This "consent" comes from ALL OF THE "GOVERNED" COLLECTIVELY, AS A WHOLE, through the ELECTION process, not from a single, individual person INDIVIDUALLY, outside the ELECTION process.

Again, we see that the "sovereign citizen" movement and the "sovereign citizen" belief system that surrounds it is largely the result of the inability of amateur legal theorists to distinguish between SINGULAR and PLURAL terms.
 
It doesn’t say so explicitly, but this looks like a FMOTL believer - https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/jun/23/man-refused-to-register-sons-birth-high-court

Hayden said the couple’s deliberate decision not to register the birth stemmed from the boy’s father’s unusual and somewhat eccentric beliefs about the concept of personal sovereignty. He said the boy’s mother was not prepared to register the birth herself, but was not opposed to somebody else registering it.

He said the father had a genuinely held belief in the power and writ of the individual. The father told the judge: “We are each our own sovereign. We are governed by a common law but only to the extent that we depart from three principles. These three imperatives are: to do no harm; to cause no loss; to inflict no injury.”

The judge said the father regarded registering a birth as the equivalent of making an entry on to a ship’s manifest. He argued that registering the birth would make the child “an asset to the country, which has boarded a vessel to sail on the high seas”.
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Save your child from state control by not registering their birth

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/jun/23/man-refused-to-register-sons-birth-high-court

"Hayden said the couple’s deliberate decision not to register the birth stemmed from the boy’s father’s unusual and somewhat eccentric beliefs about the concept of personal sovereignty."

The judgment says:

It is in this context that when a birth is registered, F considers this to be the equivalent of an ‘entry into a ship’s manifest’, in which the child becomes ‘an asset to the country which has boarded a vessel to sail on the high seas.’This facet of admiralty and maritime law is pervasive in F’s thinking. The essence of F’s objection is his belief that registration will cause his son to become controlled by a State which he perceives to be authoritarian and capricious.
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To be honest, I was impressed at how respectful the judge is towards these delusions. I would have been much more dismissive....
 
Might be the mark of a great judge that a challenge like this brings out their passion for examining and explaining points of law. I am also guessing that entertaining these ideas, as well as being a duty, probably serves as guidance for future cases as well as students of law.
 
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I wonder if there are any statistics or studies on the children of sovereign citizens. Do they grow up to be the same thing?
 
Sounds like its an extension of the "Your birth certificate is worth $millions" conspiracy... yes, there is such a thing.

SciManDan did a humorous take-down youtube video, but I can't find it at the moment.
 
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As has been pointed out many times, the whole soverign citizen propaganda was likely started by the companies that repair car windows.
 
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