Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sovereign Citizens

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.‎

The result was redirect to Sovereign Citizen Movement. JForget 21:46, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Sovereign Citizens

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The article, as written, is an utter work of fiction. The "founding fathers" never used this term, and there is absolutely no evidence that such an interpretation was intended other than the type of original research and synthesis embodied in this article. bd2412 T 18:58, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Note: This debate has been included in the list of United States of America-related deletion discussions. —Beeblebrox (talk) 19:11, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Philosophy-related deletion discussions. —Beeblebrox (talk) 19:14, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Delete or Redirect The actual term used by Benjamin Franklin and others was Popular sovereignty. This article looks like it is well sourced, but the sources don't actually seem to ever use this term, making it a synthesis violation and original research. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:28, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

~~STRONG Keep~~ MERGE. Many early Constitutional scholars (pre-Civil War), such as Rawle, recognized that the US is a true Republic, where sovereignty is held by the citizens. See: http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_4_citizenships23.html

Here is a brief quote from "A View of the Constitution of the United States" by Rawle:

In a republic the sovereignty resides essentially, and entirely in the people. Those only who compose the people, and partake of this sovereignty are citizens, they alone can elect, and are capable of being elected to public offices, and of course they alone can exercise authority within the community: they possess an unqualified right to the enjoyment of property and personal immunity, they are bound to adhere to it in peace, to defend it in war, and to postpone the interests of all other countries to the affection which they ought to bear for their own.

The citizens of each state constituted the citizens of the United States when the Constitution was adopted. The rights which appertained to them as citizens of those respective commonwealths, accompanied them in the formation of the great, compound commonwealth which ensued. They became citizens of the latter, without ceasing to be citizens of the former, and he who was subsequently born a citizen of a state, became at the moment of his birth a citizen of the United States. Therefore every person born within the United States, its territories or districts, whether the parents are citizens or aliens, is a natural born citizen in the sense of the Constitution, and entitled to all the rights and privileges appertaining to that capacity."

To use the words "Sovereign" and "citizen" contiguously is NOT synthesis! We could just as well use "Sovereign People" for the article title, but that wouldn't be synthesis, either! Trasel (talk) 20:47, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

So, do you have a source that specifically refers to this term? As I noted above, we already have an article on Popular sovereignty. Your own observations and opinions are not sufficient basis for an article, as I'm sure you are aware. Beeblebrox (talk) 21:33, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Indeed. First off, Rawle was not a "founding father" but a later interpreter, who himself never wrote of this concept of "Sovereign Citizens" that has recently been dreamt up. There are two ways to interpret the statement "sovereignty resides essentially, and entirely in the people" - that each individual is in some way an ungovernable "sovereign" (i.e. anarchy), or that the people collectively are the sovereign (i.e. democracy). No source suggests that the founders (or Rawle, or anybody else up to fairly recent times) intended the former. Even Rawle, in referring to citizenship in commonwealths, can not be read to support anarchist notions of the individual citizen being a lone, lawless sovereign. bd2412 T 21:46, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

I think that Beeblebrox has missed my point. By that line of reasoning, if our founding fathers had written of "the rights of homosexual people", but never used the two words "homosexual rights" contiguously, then you would call it "synthesis" to have a wiki article titled "Homosexual Rights." Trasel (talk) 21:53, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

It would be synthesis to pretend that the founding fathers had such a thing in mind, as this article makes believe. bd2412 T 22:01, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

~~Delete~~: WP:FRINGE, WP:SYNTH, WP:OR. None of the references look valid. Some link to back to Wikipedia, some link to apparent non-WP:RS sources like radicalacademy.com and freedomcircle.com, and none actually use the term "sovereign citizens". Google Books shows that the expression is popular among antigovernment extremists, but that's not what the article is about. — Rankiri (talk) 21:57, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Delete and redirect to Sovereign Citizen Movement as per Smerdis of Tlön and Metropolitan90's arguments below. — Rankiri (talk) 18:50, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

MERGE.:I've just reviewed the Popular Sovereignty article. And I saw quotes like this one:

Benjamin Franklin expressed the concept when he wrote, "In free governments the rulers are the servants and the people their superiors and sovereigns."

.. which leads me to conclude that it is a much better researched, written and referenced article and essentially renders this more recent wiki page (in question) redundant. So I'm revising my vote. I can now see that it is best that Sovereign Citizens be MERGED with the Popular Sovereignty article, initially via a redirect, and later perhaps importing any portions of it that are apropos and properly referenced. Trasel (talk) 22:19, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

If by "merge" you mean to dump into popular sovereignty the OR synthesis that falsely suggests that the Constitution or its framers express some notion of individuals not being beholden to the law, then there's nothing mergeable. bd2412 T 22:39, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Unless you failed to read what I wrote, namely: "...and later perhaps importing any portions of it that are apropos and properly referenced.", then I can only take that as a misplaced and possibly antagonistic reproof. Please be civil. Trasel (talk) 22:47, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Well then let me be clear. There is nothing "properly referenced" here, and no reliable source will be found asserting of this interpretation to the framers or founding fathers or however they may be delineated, because it is simply untrue. bd2412 T 23:08, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Delete This seems to fall somewhere between duplication of popular sovereignty and a derivative of Sovereign Citizen Movement. --Cybercobra (talk) 00:23, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
Redirect to Sovereign Citizen Movement, which is probably what most people looking for the topic "Sovereign Citizens" are thinking of. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 03:39, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
Delete Original research not supported by the sources. Edward321 (talk) 15:50, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
Delete and redirect to Sovereign Citizen Movement. The current text is an opinionated hoax. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 16:11, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.