Homemade Sovereignty

Let's ReThink History
Let's ReThink History
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Ordinary people and local officials manufacturing their own jurisdiction and declaring it supreme over the federal government. © 2026 Selway Solutions LLC · Educational & Institutional Use License · Contact

  1. Episode 1

    The Constitutional Sheriff Movement: Why a County Sheriff Claims to Outrank the President

    Can a county sheriff really block federal law? A fringe but fast-growing legal theory says yes. We trace the Constitutional Sheriff idea from its origins in the antisemitic 1969 Posse Comitatus, through its respectable rebranding under Richard Mack and the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA, founded 2011), to the armed Western standoffs at Bunkerville (2014) and the Malheur refuge (2016).

  2. Episode 2

    The Shire-Reeve Myth: How Modern Sheriffs Weaponize Medieval History

    The Constitutional Sheriff movement claims the medieval shire-reeve was an independent protector of local liberty. Medieval documents tell a different story. We show how supremacy theorists distort a single historical title to claim authority over the President. The documentary record is unambiguous: Anglo-Saxon and Norman shire-reeves served at the Crown's pleasure.

  3. Episode 3

    Printz v. United States: How a Narrow Constitutional Ruling Became a Blank Check for States

    Printz v. United States (1997) was meant to be simple: Congress cannot force state sheriffs to run background checks. But the ruling created an asymmetry that states weaponized. Progressive cities created sanctuary laws. States legalized cannabis. Conservative states passed Second Amendment Sanctuaries. Federal law is supreme on paper; in practice, it's optional when states refuse cooperation.

  4. Episode 4

    The Sagebrush Rebellion: How a 1976 Land Law Sparked 50 Years of Armed Standoffs

    In 1976, Congress quietly ended a century of homesteading and declared Western public lands would stay federal forever. Overnight, ranchers became permanent tenants of the federal government — and a dispute over grazing fees began its evolution into armed standoffs and a constitutional theory that claims county sheriffs can arrest federal agents. FLPMA, the water-rights collision, the enforcement gap, and the birth of county supremacy.

  5. Episode 5

    How Two Sheriffs Decided the Bundy Standoff and Malheur Occupation

    In April 2014, militia snipers took positions on an Interstate 15 overpass, rifles aimed at federal agents below — and the federal government backed down. Two years later the same movement seized a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon, and it collapsed. The difference was the sheriff. Bunkerville, Malheur, the death of LaVoy Finicum, and the prosecutions that ended in acquittals and dismissal — the episode where the series' legal theories met armed reality.

  6. Episode 6

    Sovereign Citizens in Court: The Strawman, the Gold-Fringed Flag, and Why Judges Stopped Arguing

    "I am not the corporate entity JOHN DOE on your indictment — I am the living man." Judges have heard it so many times they've developed a standardized playbook. We walk through the strawman split, the admiralty-flag theory, and the boilerplate shutdown — then the Moorish sovereign adaptation: the 1787 Treaty of Morocco, urban squatting behind homemade treaties, fraudulent deeds, and invented tribal nations. Armed sovereignty exploits the enforcement gap and sometimes wins; paper sovereignty attacks the courts on ground the courts own, and loses every time.

  7. Episode 7

    The Supremacy Clause: Why Every Nullification Theory Has Lost in Court for 200 Years

    The series finale. Every theory in this series — the constitutional sheriff, the shire-reeve myth, county supremacy, the strawman, the 1787 treaty — collides with two sentences written in 1787 and loses. We trace the unbroken line from McCulloch v. Maryland through the Nullification Crisis, Ableman v. Booth, Cooper v. Aaron, and United States v. Nye County, then the three courtroom counters that dismantle the movement's pillars. The honest ending: the rebuttal wins every courtroom and still lost at Bunkerville — legal supremacy is a promise kept by institutions, not a physical fact.

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About

Ordinary people and local officials manufacturing their own jurisdiction and declaring it supreme over the federal government. © 2026 Selway Solutions LLC · Educational & Institutional Use License · Contact

Information

  • Channel
    Let's ReThink History
  • Creator
    Nick Mackenzie
  • Episodes
    7
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Selway Solutions LLC · Educational & Institutional Use License (https://history.selwaysolutions.io/index.html#license) · Contact: nick@selwaysolutions.io
  • Show Website
    Homemade Sovereignty

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