There was a group in Texas, called themselves sovereign citizens and tried to organize a ‘Republic of Texas’. AG and Rangers got a bit tired of them, and they were arrested with no violence.
Well in the first place, the post that started this thread was by a very crude shill. Shills often misspell obvious words to alert other shills that they are shilling. I mean really, someone is paid enough to rate attending a "government threat briefing" yet has never heard of "sovereign citizens," doesn't do any googling on its billion entries, and can't spell the word "sovereign"? Yeah, right.
FWIW though, the phrase "sovereign citizen," at least to my understanding, is a contradiction. Despite all the support shills on the threat bellowing about "kooks" and making up stories about hand-made license plates, not to mention the government calling such people a threat, the fact of the matter is that personal sovereignty is the very foundation of this country. The idea that human rights come from God, and not the government, is THE key issue, the very root and foundation, of what makes America, America. There can be no question of this - it is found nowhere else in the world. And it does indeed describe the very essence of personal "sovereignty" - a freedom so fundamental that it came from God, and not government. In fact, government flows from the People in America, and not the other way around.
I mean, c'mon, is this really news to anyone here? So where's the derision for the idea of "sovereignty" coming from? It may be misplaced, misunderstood, etc., but seeing how it's the very essence of why we fought Great Britain and formed the country in the first place, how can it deserve derision as a concept?
But on the other hand, the Constitution does NOT start out, "We the Citizens..." And the reason is that "citizens" of a country are NOT ""sovereign." They exist under a binding of laws and responsibilities and duties TO that government.
So - "sovereign citizen" is, literally, contradictory. It is the conflation of the "sovereign" People of innate human rights from God, and the "citizens" of individuals of limited privileges granted by the government. These are two completely different legal statuses, and we are the ONLY country on earth that has the extremely difficult problem of sorting them out. So it is completely unworthy of of derision, because in fact it is the basis for entire fields of legal study - not to mention the focus of entire law firms (which in turn make millions of dollars by fighting over these issues).
In fact, in his Obamacare decision Chief Justice Roberts referred to these two concepts as the "two powers" which, he warned, can never be confused, because if they are, a police state could arise from that confusion. Does that sound like an issue that should be mocked and derided?
So separately, contrasted with each other, "sovereign" and "citizen" both exist in their own jurisdictions, lived in by people who are innately the former, yet much of their times also existing in the latter. Decoding laws, tracing out responsibilities and obligations between these two powers, are literally what entire careers and huge legal cases are made out of. So people who mock these terms are just ignorant.
On the other hand, people who combine them and believe they can just do whatever the hell they want because they are "free" are equally stupid. Both concepts have their place, and both concepts are very powerful and deserving of study and respect - it's NOT an either/or issue. Consider: Americans have fought and died for these two powers to co-exist without one destroying the other. Because both are needed, and this country continues to this day to try to find the balance between them. So to grab for one over the other, or to try to destroy one or the other, is like the bones of the body trying to destroy the flesh for being soft, of the flesh trying to destroy the bones for being rigid. In fact, they need each other, and together can work wonders. But bones without flesh is a dead pile of sticks, and flesh without bones is a rotting pile of meat.
So don't let shills make you stupid about the issue - it's vitally important to understand calmly and clearly, without hysteria or absurd inflammatory comments. And it's as real as constitutional law itself, which exists solely to study issues where these two powers conflict, to trace the boundaries between them, and to find balances that ensure BOTH a strong and safe country, AND a free people living within it.