“Sovereign citizen” (also known as “freeman” or “common law citizen”), is a term used to refer to a political movement which grew out of a belief in government abuse of power. Members often refuse to hold social security cards or driver’s licenses and avoid using zip codes. They believe that U.S. citizens are either “Fourteenth Amendment citizens” (who are subject to the federal and state laws and taxes) or “sovereign citizens”, who are subject only to common law or “constitutional law” (or both), but are not bound to obey statutory law. They claim that they are only answerable to their own interpretation of the law and are pseudo-nation in their own right. No court has ever upheld these claims.

A study in 2013-14, conducted by the nonpartisan agency the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, has found in a study that “sovereign citizens”, pose a more dangerous threat to our national security than Islamic extremists. The study results show that Islamic extremists are no longer the top concern of law enforcement; sovereign citizens are.

In the last seven years, sovereign citizens have surged from being perceived as America’s eighth biggest threat to its first. In parallel with this militia/”patriot” groups are considered the third most dangerous threat to US national security, hovering just under Islamic extremists. The perception of their danger has also increased over the past seven years. (adapted from an article in Daily Kos)

Epicurus may not have liked politics (who does in present day America?) but he never advocated subversion or anarchy. Libertarians want the benefits of living in a civilized country and don’t want to pay for them. But these so-called “sovereign citizens” are much, much worse; they recognise no Congressional authority at all, even though Congress is a keystone of the Constitution. It was an anarchist who sparked the First World War, and the “sovereign citizens” tend toward violence and anarchism, like the Balkan and Russian anarchists of old. But unlike the latter people they own a significant proportion of the 300 million or more guns in America. They reserve their darkest hatred for non-Republicans. Epicureans and other educated Americans should be aware of the dangerous threat these people pose.