4/30/2023 0 Comments Subtle subversion![]() The sheriff, they argued, was the only constitutional law enforcement officer. (1) unilateral actions by the people (i.e., the Posse) and (2) actions by the county sheriff. The Posse wanted to reverse this subversion and "restore" the Republic through There was, in fact, a "criminal conspiracy to obstruct justice, disfranchise citizens and liquidate the Constitutional Republic of these United States." They did not deny the legal existence of federal or state governments, but rather claimed that the county level was the "highest authority of government in our Republic as it is closest to the people." The basic Posse manual stated that there had been "subtle subversion" of the Constitution by various arms and levels of government, especially the judiciary. Members of the Posse Comitatus believed that the county was the true seat of government in the United States. The most important of these groups was the Posse Comitatus, 1 which originated in Oregon and California around 1970. Most grew out of a recently emergent right-wing tax-protest movement: arguments about the illegitimacy of income tax laws were easily expanded or altered to challenge the legitimacy of the government itself. However, beginning in the late 1960s, a number of right-wing fringe groups formed that questioned the authority and nature of the federal government. In fact, a number of extremist movements, from the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s to the anticommunist groups of the 1950s and 1960s, attempted with some success to ally themselves with government. Many extremist movements in the 20th century have been anti-government in the sense that they opposed governmental policies, but few have been so purely anti-government that they challenged its very legitimacy. The key distinguishing characteristic of the sovereign citizen movement is its extreme anti-government ideology, couched in conspiratorial, pseudohistorical, pseudolegal and sometimes racist language. By then the sovereign citizen movement to which Nichols subscribed had embarked upon a nationwide resurgence that would last into the 21st century its anti-government activities would cause problems in every region of the country. Even when he wrote addresses on letters, Nichols made sure to use the abbreviation "TDC" to indicate that he was using the federal zip code under "threat, duress and coercion." These exhibitions of behavior might seem odd or even humorous, but the same ideology that led to those activities also helped lead Terry Nichols to assist Timothy McVeigh in building a bomb that would kill 168 people and injure hundreds more. He tried to pay a credit card debt with a fictitious financial instrument called a "certified fractional reserve check." Brought into court in Michigan in 1993, he refused to walk to the front of the courtroom and denied the court's jurisdiction over him. Nichols, for instance, several times repudiated his allegiance to federal and state governments. Members of the sovereign citizen movement engage in a variety of seemingly bizarre activities. Its members call themselves, variously, consti-tutionalists, freemen, preamble citizens, common law citizens and non-foreign/non-resident aliens (Nichols used several of these), but most commonly refer to themselves as "sovereign citizens." ![]() ![]() Nichols subscribed to an unusual right-wing anti-government ideo-logy whose adherents have in recent years increasingly plagued public officials, law enforcement officers and private citizens with a variety of tactics designed to attack the government and other forms of authority. ![]() He was Terry Nichols, friend and accomplice of Oklahoma City Federal Building bomber Timothy McVeigh. ![]() That obscure Michigan hunter would, three years later, become known to the entire world. In April 1992, an angry resident of Sanilac County, Michigan, wrote a letter to the Michigan Department of Natural Resources stating he was no longer a "citizen of the corrupt political corporate State of Michigan and the United States of America" and was answerable only to the "Common Laws." He therefore expressly revoked his signature on any hunting or fishing licenses, which he viewed as contracts that fraudulently bound him to the illegitimate government of Michigan. ![]()
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