‘Citizen of the world’? Better to be sovereign than citizen of anywhere

By David McElroy · May 17, 2012

Are you a subject, a citizen or a sovereign? Your answer to that question says a lot about who you think owns you, at least in the earthly sense.

There’s been a lot of talk lately about Eduardo Saverin giving up U.S. citizenship as Facebook goes public. He’s one of the founders of Facebook, so he’s becoming incredibly wealthy because of Facebook’s initial public offering. By living in Singapore and giving up his U.S. citizenship, Saverin is going to save millions of dollars now and save his heirs possibly billions of dollars by avoiding U.S. estate taxes later.

Saverin told the New York Times, though, that his move isn’t about saving money.

“This had nothing to do with taxes,” Saverin told the Times. “I was born in Brazil, I was an American citizen for about 10 years. I thought of myself as a global citizen.”

In 1215, King John of England signed what came to be called the Magna Carta. (The full name in English was “The Great Charter of the Liberties of England, and of the Liberties of the Forest.”) The English lords accepted that they were subject to the king, but they tried — sometimes unsuccessfully — to get kings to limit their absolute power over them.

Although there had been other attempts to limit the king’s power, the Magna Carta was the document that survived and came to be seen as the turning point. Before that, the “divine right of kings” was generally seen as almost absolute. After that, the king’s power was somewhat limited, but the king still ruled. And that’s the real point: The king was still sovereign.

As classical liberal ideas flourished in the 18th century, the idea came to be accepted that the people themselves were sovereign. There was no need for a king. No king had no special right to rule the people. The people — collectively — were considered to have the right to rule themselves.

People living under a king were subjects. People living under the new kinds of democracies or republics that sprang up — starting with the United States — were no longer subject to the rule of a king. Instead, they were citizens of a nation. They were collectively sovereign.

This was a great improvement over the old system, in some respects, I suppose. It’s easier to hope for fair treatment from fellow citizens — people you could theoretically see as equals — than it is to hope for an individual sovereign to treat you fairly. But you still had to live your life according to the rules of the majority of people. (I’m not going to get into details about the differences between republics and democracies.)

But even under the new systems, people were subject to the whims of their fellow men. Under the old system, the king owned them. Under the new system, everyone sort of owned each other. It was supposed to be a vast improvement, but it didn’t make people free.

Today, people believe that we owe things to one another. We’re told there’s a “social contract” that somehow magically requires us to obey the decisions of our fellow man — as embodied in the state, of course. We’re told that decent people owe support and obedience to the state — and that those who become financially successful have a moral obligation to hand that money over as ordered.

As Saverin has dumped his U.S. citizenship, he’s been criticized for it. Here’s an article that lays out the case that he pretty much owes everything to us — so he owes us that money. It’s breathtakingly collectivist in attitude, but when you think about the entire democratic system, it’s a form of collectivism — just with a nicer face.

Few people still see themselves as true subjects of a monarch today. Those people believe, though, that the king or queen owns them. Most people today see themselves as citizens of one country or another. Those people believe that they are owned by their fellow citizens (and that they also own them). They believe they jointly have power over each other.

But what if you believe you own yourself? You can’t be a subject. You can’t be a citizen — not even a “world citizen.” Instead, you’re a free man or free woman. You’re a sovereign.

A sovereign is “one possessing or held to possess supreme political power or sovereignty” or “one that exercises supreme authority within a limited sphere.” If you own yourself — in the civil sense — you don’t grant political power to anyone else to rule over you. And if you own yourself, you exercise supreme authority over your own life and property.

Eduardo Saverin is certainly doing the smart thing to get his money out of the clutches of the government of this country, but he’s not giving the correct answer when he says he’s a global citizen. If he had as much understanding of the world as he has wealth, he would tell the interviewer that he doesn’t recognize the legitimate right of the U.S. government to steal his money, so he’s arranging his affairs in such a way that the least possible amount can be stolen.

Some people would call him greedy for this, but it has nothing to do with greed. It has everything to do with being a sovereign — a free man — and declining to stand by while looters take your property.

You might see America as your homeland — or Argentina or Spain or Russia or a thousand other places. But whatever you see as your home, determine to see yourself — at least in your own mind and heart — as a sovereign individual. If you don’t do that, you’re admitting to yourself that you believe someone else owns you.

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If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

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