I’ve been fascinated by sovereign dorks ever since I read this paper years ago:
Tenting, Toll, and Taxing
The author sets out to explain the ancient origins of taxation and the tldr is that, originally, a real sovereign is someone who claims ownership of land and then defends it by meeting any form of trespass with a threat of mortal combat. A tax is the money you pay to a sovereign in order to avoid him trying to literally murder you and is at the same time an acknowledgement that he is the one who owns the land even though you are standing on it, temperarily or otherwise.
So basically, the old adage of ‘’might makes right” is historically accurate. The sovereign is the sovereign because he can and will literally kill you. Nowadays sovereignties wield their putative might via police forces, laws, courts, etc. and the military but it’s really no different. The ONLY way some redneck incel is going to achieve sovereignty is by doing what the character Raven in
Neal Stephenson’s novel Snow Crash did: hard wire a live nuke to their vitals such that if they die, there is a thermonuclear explosion. In the book, Raven is a true sovereign; He goes where he wants and does what he wants because he carries deadly force that’s effective against other sovereigns (every government’s foreign policy includes the dictum “Don’t fuck with Raven”).
If you want to be a real sovereign, start murdering anyone who disagrees with your claim. But even then, you’re probably not a sovereign until people who don’t know you start giving you money to be on your land in order to avoid getting murdered. Whining about the intent of the constitution to get out of a ticket will just get you tased.
