The Struggle Within: Evaluating the Balance of Power in America

The great American experiment was founded on the revolutionary idea that power flows from the people, not the government. Its vision was framed by men who came from a system in which people were merely subjects to kings that answered only to the God that granted his right to rule. When Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, he defined a single set of individual and collective rights for all men; his premise based on the ancient principles of natural law. This philosophy asserts that humans are inherently free beings with natural rights of human behavior such as speech, thought, worship, travel, privacy, ownership and use of property, and self-defense, beyond the authority of any government, or culture to dismiss. To assure that no government would infringe the natural rights of anyone here, the founders incorporated Jefferson’s thesis into the Constitution. In contrast to a feudal society, each individual in America was assumed dominion over themselves, otherwise known as sovereignty. A new government was created with the purpose of protecting the natural rights of its citizens. In an exchange of power, Americans delegate some personal sovereignty to the government so it can have the authority and resources to meet this purpose. The idealistic intent being that government derives all of its powers from the consent of the governed.

Unfortunately, the American experiment of representative democracy could not evade the Iron Law of Oligarchy, or inevitable economic and political domination by the small elite. As former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once said, ‘We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.’ — and we currently have the greatest concentration of wealth in the world. The incomprehensibly wide gap between the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ is now a defining social and political issue in the United States. Today the top 1 percent of US adults now earns on average 81 times more than the bottom 50 percent; in 1981, they earned 27 times what the lower half earned. Since 1973, net productivity in the US has risen 73.4 percent while the typical worker has only seen an 11.1 percent increase in his hourly wage. In 2008, over 10 million families lost their homes to foreclosure and American’s retirement accounts lost nearly $2.4 trillion. While many still attribute the financial crisis to ‘greed’, Wall Street, and free-market capitalism, the real cause was government intervention in the markets. As more and more Americans become affected by our crumbling infrastructure, shameful educational system, invasion of privacy, and erosion of national sovereignty by neoliberal globalists, we see a growing movement of citizens looking to restore the balance of power so that their interests are rightly put first. Naturally this threat to the political establishment has caused them to desperately attempt to hold on to their power through force and deception.

Power not only corrupts, but it also congeals. People and organizations will try to hold on to it by any means necessary. It is also a well known fact that the powerful always try to create an outside enemy, real or imagined, to bind the followers to the leaders. This is an easy task to accomplish, given the human tendency to divide people into “us” and “them”. One such enemy that has been created is the broadly-defined, anti-government domestic “terrorist”, often also referred to as “right-wing” by the elite mainstream media. In 2013, the Obama administration quietly approved a 166-page secret document spelling out rules for putting individuals on its main terrorist database, as well as the no fly list and the selectee list, which triggers enhanced screening at airports and border crossings. The process to designate an American or foreigner alike as a terrorist requires neither “concrete facts” nor “irrefutable evidence”. It should also be noted that the document’s definition of terrorism includes any act that is “dangerous” to life, property, or infrastructure that appears to be intended to influence the policy of a government by intimidation. 18-year law enforcement veteran James Wesley Rawles wrote a list of characteristics that qualify a person as a potential domestic terrorist he received in training:

• Expressions of libertarian philosophies (statements, bumper stickers)
• Second Amendment-oriented views (NRA or gun club membership, holding a CCW permit)
• Survivalist literature (fictional books such as “Patriots” and “One Second After” are mentioned by name)
• Self-sufficiency (stockpiling food, ammo, hand tools, medical supplies)
• Fear of economic collapse (buying gold and barter items)
• Religious views concerning the book of Revelation (apocalypse, anti-Christ)
• Expressed fears of Big Brother or big government
• Homeschooling
• Declarations of Constitutional rights and civil liberties
• Belief in a New World Order conspiracy

Keeping this powerful, broadly-defined label of “terrorist” in mind, one individual that has been labeled as such is the “sovereign citizen”(SC). A 2015 Department of Homeland Security (DHS) assessment was titled Sovereign Citizen Extremist Ideology Will Drive Violence at Home, During Travel, and at Government Facilities. CNN claimed this tiny movement of people is a “greater threat ISIS”. In reality, this is an unorganized, leaderless subculture of anarchists whose elaborate legal theories say they do not have to follow most laws. Their perceptual lens, or the way they see the world, is strongly driven by a reinterpretation of the historical narrative of the United States. The SC movement increased after 2008 when many people lost their homes, forcing them to become squatters in foreclosed properties. What draws people to the idea of invoking “sovereignty”, is usually desperation from losing a legal battle that strips them of a home, business, spouse, or puts them in jail. While some SCs believe in the legitimacy of their claim, there are also many who are simply scam artists. Most sovereign citizens fly under the radar and live off the grid but a few have resorted to violence against judges, IRS agents, and law enforcement. They have a distrust of power held by authoritative entities, especially those connected to the government. They believe the source of this power illegitimate and ill-gotten, as it violates the inherent natural rights they have according to the Declaration of Independence. They argue that the purpose of government power is to not rule over citizens, but rather act as a subordinate representative to citizens. The impact of this mentality on society is long, drawn-out, expensive court battles over words. This has been labeled as “paper terrorism” by authorities.

Individual sovereignty is the exercise of free will. The Founding Fathers recognized individual free will, or individual sovereignty, as the right of every human being to life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness. However, in the way that National sovereignty is characterized by geographical boundaries, individual sovereignty is essentially a state of mind, and its boundaries are limited by the proximity of other individuals who also have the right to exercise free will. John Locke makes it clear that he also follows the Natural Law belief in his Second Treatise of Government. For him, the state of nature is not a state of license because man “has not Liberty to destroy himself, or so much as any creature in his possession, but where some nobler use, than its bare preservation calls for it.” Therefore, he would likely disagree with SC extremists that resort to violence. However, in the following section Locke contradicts this by stating ““And that all men may be restrained from invading “others rights, and from doing hurt to one another, and the law of nature be observed, which willeth the peace and preservation of all mankind, the execution of the law of nature is, in that state, put into every man’s hands, whereby every one has a right to punish the transgressors of that law to such a degree, as may hinder its violation: for the law of nature would, as all other laws that concern men in this world ‘be in vain, if there were no body that in the state of nature had a power to execute that law, and thereby preserve the innocent and restrain offenders. ” SCs could arguably justify their actions by this. Locke further supports their claims by clarifying that rebellion is permissible when the government subverts the ends for which it is established, and indicates that is it possible that someone is better off rejecting a particular civil government and returning to the state of nature before electing a new government. Locke argued that a person becomes a citizen of a nation by availing himself with the amenities provided by said nation. He called this “tacit” or silent consent to citizenship. Locke’s position on property was that man, enacting his labor upon nature creates his own property. Therefore, an individual that is on land or using goods owned either privately or collectively by other citizens, tacitly consents to the will and rights of that owner to stop them. He believed that the purpose of government was to preserve property, and stresses this because this allowed people to form a commonwealth. This is reflected in the last section of Second Treatise, “The power that every individual gave the society, when he entered into it, can never revert to the “individuals again, as long as the society lasts, but will always remain in the community; because without this there can be no community, no commonwealth, which is contrary to the original agreement: so also when the society hath placed the legislative in any assembly of men, to continue in them and their successors, with direction and authority for providing such successors, the legislative can never revert to the people whilst that government lasts; because having provided a legislative with power to continue for ever, they have given up their political power to the legislative, and cannot resume it.”

The primary contradictions Marxist thought would have to SCs, would be concerning individualism and ownership of private property. While the sovereign movement is mainly characterized by isolated ‘lone-wolf’ incidents connected to personal grievances, Marx believed in large, collective revolutions that actively resisted the ruling class by disregarding their laws and domination. He would criticize the movements belief in natural right to property because he felt that the freedom of private property is alienating, because it presupposes the egotistic monad.
On the other hand, Marx would agree with the SCs in advocating a government that was part of the people and resisting one run by a class of ruling elite. In Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, he explains alienation “Thus through alienated externalized labor does the worker create the relation to this work of man alienated to labor and standing outside it. The relation of the worker to labor produces the relation of the capitalist to labor, or whatever one wishes to call the lord of labor. Private property is thus product, result, and necessary consequence of externalized labor, of the external relation of the worker to nature and to himself. Private property thus is derived, through analysis, from the concept of externalized labor, that is, externalized man, alienated labor, alienated life, and alienated man.” Marx, like the SCs, felt very strongly about class division, and exploitation of the lower class. They both have a distrust and hatred of powerful elites.

I believe Sovereign Citizens have legitimate political grievances that a vast majority of Americans would agree with. However, their weakness lies in their methods of resistance and perceived explanations as to the cause. The past Presidential election is evidence that working class people in this country feel they have been politically disenfranchised and have watched their natural and constitutional rights slowly deteriorate or replaced by a “global rule of law.” Both Locke’s philosophy on natural rights and Marx’s theory of economic class struggle are very relevant in understanding the dynamics of power in todays society. Many ideas can be taken from both these thinkers when exploring ways in which both power and liberty can be brought back into balance in America.

Sources
DHS. Sovereign Citizen Extremist Ideology Will Drive Violence at Home, During Travel, and at Government Facilities. Feb 05, 2015. https://fas.org/irp/eprint/sovereign.pdf.

Dilliard, Irving. Mr. Justice Brandeis, Great American : Press Opinion and Public Appraisal. St. Louis: Modern View Press, 1941.

Gold, Howard R. New data: Inequality runs even deeper than previously thought. May 23, 2017. http://review.chicagobooth.edu/economics/2017/article/new-data-inequality-runs- even-deeper-previously-thought.

Locke, John, and C. B. Macpherson. 1980. Second treatise of government. Indianapolis, Ind: Hackett Pub. Co.

Marx, Karl, Friedrich Engels, Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx, and Friedrich Engels. 1987. Economic and philosophic manuscripts of 1844. Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books.

Perez, Evan. DHS report warns of domestic terror threat. Feb 20, 2015. http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/19/politics/terror-threat-homeland-security/index.html.

Rawles, James Wesley. Beware of Homeland Security Training for Local Law Enforcement, by An Insider. March 30, 2011. https://survivalblog.com/beware-of-homeland-security-tr/.

The Productivity–Pay Gap. August 2016. http://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/.

US National Counterterrorism. Watchlisting Guidance. March 2013. https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/1227228/2013-watchlist-guidance.pdf.