Flogging a Wooden Horse: Law and Title Case

It happened today again. I ran across a posting on some website where someone was gibbering about the government, legal authority, and using all capital letters on legal documents. It won’t matter how many times someone tells me of a serious conversation with some government functionary who suddenly became worried that a commoner would know the secrets about capitalizing and such. It’s a lie. Whether some government document shows your name in all caps or not makes not a bit of difference, and it never has.

For those who are at least acquainted with the history of this wild notion, it’s referred to as “nom de guerre” — a French term (“name of combatant”) referring to some sinister act of the US Congress in the 1930s which rendered all citizens legally as enemies of the government. Putting the names of citizens in all caps makes them a corporation and thus subject to some supposed international law of warfare.

This silliness comes in the same package with a bunch of other manure regarding the question of whether, for example, the former British Commonwealth dependencies (Australia, New Zealand, Canada) are actually independent, whether the US is for completely different reasons, etc.

First, don’t try to use this capitalization business in a court of law in the US. It’s been rejected repeatedly. It won’t matter if you are right in some objective absolute sense, because the current powers-that-be won’t allow it. You might fool a cop or clerk somewhere, but it won’t work with any judge.

Second, it is also pure hogwash in terms of history and law. Try this law historian or the famous Devvy Kidd, ultimate expert of all things regarding the Patriot/Liberty Movement. In short, the use of all caps on legal documents is simply the accretion of habits from several centuries of lawyers dragging their feet when technology advanced for producing their voluminous case filings. Using all caps meets a simple legal requirement for something to be conspicuous amongst the sea of printed characters.

Third, in the absolutist sense, the vast majority of all governments today are illegitimate. I have yet to find a one which meets the ultimate and final standards published by God Almighty, so long ago, we can’t even assign a date. But we know it all goes back to the one family which populated the entire earth: Noah. Yeah, that ancient Deluge which wiped the earth of all but eight folks in a boat. I’m one of those who could care less what “science” you have for arguing in favor of other narratives of human origin. None of  us were there, but God was. The whole point is not Noah nor even his boat and where you can find the remains of it today. The point is God revealed what He wanted us to know about human social structure after the Fall, and all humanity are accountable to that revelation. It doesn’t get any more absolute than that.

So if you run across any fool patriot types who yak about all caps and so forth on legal documents, tell them flogging a wooden horse won’t make it run. It just makes you tired, angry, and you still get no where.