http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/the-other-enemy-anarchy
I was recently in Fort Worth, Texas and happened upon the National Sheriffs’ Association annual conference and exhibition. A two-part seminar presentation scheduled for June 25 caught my eye: “The Sovereign Citizen Movement— The Emerging Threat to Law Enforcement, What Cops Need to Know.” The SCM is the latest round of what is a constant plague that ebbs and flows through American (and other) society: anarchy. A “sovereign” has the highest authority; nothing can overrule him or constrain him. He is entirely self-governed, which means he is above the laws enacted by others. Indeed, he is literally an outlaw living in a “state of nature” which Thomas Hobbes described as being where life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.”
The term “sovereign citizen” is an oxymoron because a citizen is a member of an organized state with duties as well as rights. A citizen is subject to the sovereign power of the government and the moral order of the society the government has been established to defend. The personal declaration of “sovereignty” by the anarchist removes him from both state and society.
The concern of law enforcement for such “individuals” is clear and certainly took on more meaning this month with the cold blooded murder of two Las Vegas policemen by Jerad and Amanda Miller who were practicing anarchists. They yelled to others at the pizzeria where they shot the cops at lunch: “Tell the police the revolution has begun.” And they had shown their rejection of law earlier by stealing cars in Washington and Indiana. They had posted photos of themselves dressed as the psychotic comic book villains Joker and Harlequin. They draped a Nazi flag over the body of one of the dead officers.
The slain policemen were Alyn Beck, who left a wife and three kids, and Igor Soldo, whose wife had just given birth to their first child. The Millers then killed a woman at random in the entrance of a Wal-Mart. In the gun battle with responding police, Jerad was fatally shot and Amanda committed suicide. Beck and Soldo were not the first victims of anarchists. The FBI attributes the deaths of six officers between 2000 and 2011 to “sovereign citizen extremists.”
In should be noted that the vast majority of Americans do not share the Miller’s antipathy towards authority. The latest Gallup Poll (June 5-8) on confidence in institutions rated the Military first with 74% support and the Police third with 53% support.
Violence is not (yet) the main threat from anarchists. A 2011 report on the SCM by the FBI’s Counterterrorism Analysis Section opens “They could be dismissed as a nuisance, a loose network of individuals living in the United States who call themselves ‘sovereign citizens’ and believe that federal, state, and local governments operate illegally. Some of their actions, although quirky, are not crimes. The offenses they do commit seem minor, like creating false license plates, driver’s licenses, and even currency.” They have also printed up fake “diplomatic” papers that claim to make them exempt from all taxes and laws of the United States. Financial fraud is also common, as they do not believe the banking system or the national currency are legitimate so they can abuse both at will.