In Defense of "The Sovereign Society"
May 19, 2011
This week, the CBS 60 Minutes show made a veiled visual reference to The Sovereign Society in the middle of a report on an occasionally violent, very loosely organized group of people calling themselves sovereign citizens. This was really bad journalism. There is nothing remotely violent about The Sovereign Society.
The Sovereign Society is part of the Agora publishing organization, which publishes my twice-weekly e-letter, Gary North's Reality Check.
If you saw the segment, you may be concerned about The Sovereign Society. Please read this. If so, please read this response.
"We must set the record straight."Some of you have seen the recent 60 Minutes segment titled Sovereign Citizens, in which the CBS news program examined a marginalized faction of disaffected Americans who live by a largely anarchist belief system and which, 60 Minutes says, the FBI considers a domestic terror threat.
"To build its case that the so-called sovereign-citizen movement is a menace to America, 60 Minutes pointed its camera at The Sovereign Society website, holding for about six seconds on a single headline: Never Pay U.S. Taxes Again Legally. As the shot closes in on the headline and Sovereign Society logo, reporter Byron Pitts asserts that the Internet is full of ân endless stream of mind-numbing seminars on how, with just the right paperwork, you too can beat the system.
"Had Mr. Pitts, his researchers or 60 Minutes legal team bothered to read beyond the headline the producers chose to emphasize, they would have instantly realized that The Sovereign Society story they played up had nothing to do with the premise of the 60 Minutes segment. Where 60 Minutes focused on a band of largely poor Americans who effectively believe the U.S. government is illegitimate, our story was about expatriation, which remains a fully legal, non-violent, non-confrontational option for Americans who wish to renounce citizenship for asset-protection reasons,a move that ultimately would result in not owing taxes to the U.S. government, legally.
"I come from the pinnacle of high-quality journalism. I spent 17 years as a reporter for The Wall Street Journal. I know the game 60 Minutes unsuccessfully tried to play. Its researchers trolled the Internet for anything tied to the word sovereign, and when they found The Sovereign Society website and the headline about legally avoiding taxes, they latched onto it as an inflammatory smoking gun.
"Only, there is no gun. And there is no smoke.
"There is but an exceedingly poor decision by 60 Minutes to libel The Sovereign Society by wrongly inferring that we the publication and you, our readers are a part of a militant, anti-government movement of domestic terrorists that has resulted in the death of police officers and threats against others within the U.S. judicial system.
"Nothing is further from the truth. And 60 Minutes careless, mistaken portrayal is as maddening as it is libelous.
"Inferring that The Sovereign Society is tied to the sovereign-citizen movement is about as accurate as inferring that 60 Minutes is a show on timepieces simply because of its title.
"Had Mr. Pitts or 60 Minutes research and legal squad properly vetted this segment, they would have quickly recognized that we the Sovereign Society staff and you, our readers are not in any conceivable way a part of the sovereign-citizen movement. The Society is a financial publication, not a mouthpiece for violence.
"60 Minutes amateurish reporting clearly misses the point of what we are truly all about namely, unique overseas investment advice and proven strategies on asset-protection, foreign real-estate purchases and ways to obtain residency and citizenship overseas. All of the ideas and strategies we report on are fully legal and compliant with U.S. tax laws.
"The news magazine is essentially guilty of what it implies of us, sensationalism. It grabbed our headline simply to grab the attention of its viewers the exact same reason we wrote the headline to grab the attention of our readers.
"60 Minutes, however, never contacted anyone at our organization to seek comment on its story or the portrayal of The Sovereign Society as a fringe group. In failing to do so, 60 Minutes violated the most basic tenet of quality journalism: Give those you seek to besmirch the right to defend their actions.
"Had Mr. Pitts or the researchers he relied on picked up the phone to ask a few simple questions, they would have learned quickly that they were standing on faulty, libelous logic.
"The Sovereign Society is not a part of the sovereign-citizen fringe. We do not advocate any form of violence against any elected official or officers of the law.
"The Society does not advise members to disavow the tax system or to seek ways to illegally avoid taxation.
"We are not pushing for the overthrow of government and we are not anarchists.
"We're peaceful, law-abiding libertarians who simply believe in maximizing individual rights through minimizing the role of the federal government on her people and the states that comprise her union. We do not believe in the elimination of government, but rather that the hand of government must be light that laws and taxation must be applied even-handedly and adherent to free-market ideals and that the federal government's role in America should largely be limited to its primary function of protecting her citizens, securing her borders, maintaining sound monetary and fiscal policies to defend her currency, and ensuring the rule of law.
"We promote 100% legal investment and asset-protection strategies tied to opportunities that exist globally. In doing so, we tell our readers that any income earned overseas is subject to U.S. taxes, and we regularly explain that any financial accounts must be reported annually to the U.S. Treasury Department. We do not promote or support tax-avoidance schemes, though we do show our subscribers how to reduce their tax obligation, protect their assets and invest globally through strategies that are fully compliant under America's current tax code and legal system.
"We take exception with 60 Minutes' portrayal of a sovereign individual as a radical who believes that he is above the law. It's clear that Mr. Bryon, his researchers and the producers, editors and lawyers at 60 Minutes are clueless to the notion...that America, herself, is the quintessential example of sovereignty.
"A sovereign individual is simply a self-reliant person, someone who exerts supreme authority within a limited sphere of influence. Those italics are key. Sovereign individuals, unlike the fringe sovereign-citizen movement, operate within the bounds of their own life and do not seek to exert control over others through physical or financial force or coercion.
"We believe that individuals have the freedom to make their own choices within an ethical framework that does not impinge on the rights of others. And, we believe, you must live with the consequences of those choices without relying on others to bail you out when your choices go bad.
"60 Minutes not only libeled The Sovereign Society, it belittled our readers and every American who shares our view that the best government is a limited government, and that the pursuit of personal liberty and free-market economics is a noble cause.
"Now more than ever, stay Sovereign."
Jeff D. Opdyke
Investment Director & Senior Editor, The Sovereign Society
http://www.sovereignsociety.com
Here is the video. The offending segment appears at 7:48.
The broadcast says that there are 300,000 members, though of course they are not members, since they insist that they are autonomous. The number of cases of violence listed on the show are minimal: about half a dozen.
When you see the YouTube videos stream by, you will note how few "hits" there are.
These people used to call themselves Patriots or Freemen. They are part of a tax revolt. I have been warning people against them for almost 30 years. The idea that anyone is authorized to take up arms against lawful authorities on his own authority is ethically wrong. I edited two books on this in 1983: The Theology of Christian Resistance and Tactics of Christian Resistance. This was during an era of organized government efforts to shut down the home school movement. On the whole, we won that fight by using the courts.
Conservatives can be tarred and feathered by the mainstream media for holding anti-government positions. The Sovereign Society was such a victim of mistaken identity.
Choose your compatriots well.