A Texas man fired on police Monday and declared that he was a sovereign citizen and had seceded from the United States, calling his sovereign state "Doug-i-stan." Much of human advancement and exploration has been driven by this instinct, from the first humans to leave east Africa a million years ago to the colonization of the New World and Australia just a few centuries ago. Doug is a crazy, but it's a type of crazy that is a major part of the human condition.
In the 1600s, crossing the Atlantic to come to America required a substantial investment...you had to buy space on a ship and convince that ship to cross a very dangerous ocean and go to a place that that was almost completely unexplored and was known to have large numbers of dangerous, inscrutable people living there. But a lot of people took the challenge. A lot of them sold themselves into a type of temporary slavery called "indentured service" to pay the fare. Many did not like the situation they were in: oppressive local leaders trying to take their profits or force them to behave or believe in ways they didn't like...But the realization that freedom could be obtained by simply moving into the next valley, or later on, to the next territory. It was harder and more dangerous than staying put but you had a better chance of controlling your own life.
As long as there was open, arable land available, these adventurous souls could try out whatever lifestyle they pleased, and the homestead act of 1862 made even more available. Violence, against natives, thieves, encroachment from other groups, animals, was commonplace and often necessary for survival, so guns, while terribly expensive, became an important part of many of these little cultures. Going out into the "back 40" to practice or hunt was not just a right, it was often necessary. But homesteading was far cheaper, and far more practical for the poor farm families of the 1870s than it was at any time before or since.
But today there is no more open land. Many of the descendants of the homesteaders lost their farms in the dust bowl and depression, but a lot are still there and still have the craving to be able to hunt on their own, to be able to graze on land that doesn't seem to be occupied at the moment (or steal it even if it is), to express themselves in whatever way comes to them. The homestead act had required that homesteaders not have been in rebellion to get the land; it had been a way to draw many potential confederate soldiers away from battle; but many of them were inclined to support the "states rights" cause even though they were far too poor to have owned slaves, and many of our rural areas still have this inclination very strongly. They haven't quite internalized the fact that not only is the homestead act over, the possibility of such a thing is over and trying to act in ways that were appropriate in the 1860s through'80s is just not possible in today's society.
In many ways this is regrettable. The homesteads of the future will be on the Moon, on Mars, perhaps on asteroids or O'Neill cylinders, or even on planets around undiscovered stars. It will take a much larger investment--of talent, of training, of treasure--to achieve these, and there won't be many openings for non-wealthy, poorly educated, but determined and hard working farmers. The craving to do whatever you please, even at the risk your own survival, is strong in the human race. But there is no space left for "sovereign citizens" like Doug, and if they shoot at people, they must be dealt with as criminals. I'd like to leave the Dougs and the Cliven Bundy's of the world alone, to find out just exactly how hard it is to live a truly "sovereign" life, but unfortunately they are our neighbors and we need to keep our other neighbors safe.
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