A couple of weeks ago, I confessed to one of my less dignified hobbies: I love watching sovereign citizens get arrested.
The recipe rarely changes.
A police officer asks for a driver's license. Our hero explains that he's not "driving"; he's "traveling." The officer asks again. Ten minutes later, somebody is shouting about maritime jurisdiction through a window that's about to become considerably less window-shaped.
ICYMI: I Admit It: I Love Watching Sovereign Citizens Get Arrested
I thought I understood these people. Then I started wondering where all this came from.
Follow the rabbit hole far enough, and it leads surprisingly close to home.
There wasn't one Sovereign Citizen Founding Convention where somebody banged a gavel and declared driver's licenses unconstitutional. The movement grew from the tax-protest movement of the late 1960s and an anti-government movement called Posse Comitatus. Around 1969, Henry Beach in Oregon and William Potter Gale in California separately organized early Posse groups.
Gale was also a Christian Identity preacher. The early movement carried ugly racist and antisemitic beliefs alongside its anti-tax and anti-federal-government ideology .
The Posse...