According to classical liberals, the consent of the governed, when expressed as the “consent of the people,” or as “common consent,” is considered to be a type of collective consent; but, is there such a thing as the individual consent to be governed? If so, that would seem to imply that such a form of consent can also be revoked. Whether such a revocation is legally allowed by the government is another question entirely.
Right from the beginning, the author grossly contradicts himself. He claims that Canadian children can be snatched by government agents only if they first have a birth certificate; however, his own daughter, Elizabeth Anne Elaine, did not have a birth certificate, and this was used by the social worker as the justification for why the infant Elizabeth was forcibly removed from her parents by the government. Menard describes his interpretation about child registration thusly:
“When you register your offspring, you are creating a legal entity or person, you are associating that person with your offspring, and then you are abandoning that entity to the government, who appears to be seizing it under the laws of maritime commerce. This ‘person’ is in fact chattel property and can and is used for collateral on loans. Your registered baby is in fact a form of pledge and is worth a lot of money. Also, if they ever come for your baby acting under some legislation, it is that chattel property they are acting upon, not your offspring. But because it was all done apparently lawfully and legally, and you maintain the association between that entity and your baby, they have the right to affect your offspring.”
Now, let’s see how well this assertion of his stands up against the government’s own actions. Menard himself describes that:
“On Dec. 5th, 2000 The Ministry of Children and Family Services ‘legally removed’ a child that didn’t ‘legally exist.’ They did so without investigation. Because the acted without information, they claimed the infant had only one caregiver. They were wrong. The parents said they would prove in court the infant had two caregivers and they were a family in act and intent. In order to deny the parent’s recourse to the Law, the ministry worker said that if they tried to speak the truth in court, she would see to it that the child spent the first five years of her life going from foster home to foster home. This was an act of extortion. This is a society where the government workers feel they have the right to tear apart a family without investigation and then deny the parents recourse to the law. This is the worst form of tyranny and it is one I will not consent to.”
Menard didn’t just say this only in the introduction to his book, he also used it in a letter he sent to the entire Canadian government:
“Hello, I am Robert Arthur Menard and about 1000 days ago, the government agent named Celia Huber, an agent with The Ministry of Children, Family, and Community Development threatened a two day old infant with permanent and irreparable harm. Her unlawful actions stopped me from speaking the truth in court and resulted in the child being endangered and her mother becoming a broken addict on the streets. It didn’t have to be. A little awareness and compassion from one government worker and the entire heartbreaking story could have been avoided. Instead, because of the deception in their mandates and the capricious attitude and unaccountability which they seem to enjoy, a family was destroyed. My family was destroyed. I am NOT happy about that.”
As you can see, Menard has a serious ax to grind. After elaborately describing what he thinks is the incremental demise of Canadian society, he concludes this same letter by saying:
“This situation must change. This situation will change or our society is dead. I am going to try to change it, not with anger, fear, or shame, but with my love for Elizabeth Anne Elaine and my compassion for my fellow man. You may be able to stop me from sharing my love; you can never however stop me from loving. This love is going to manifest itself in a way that is going to be very difficult for you to deal with. I will be engaging in a lawful course of action which is sure to get the attention of my fellow citizens and will hopefully result in this society radically changing the way it creates money and empowers representatives and their agents. Consider it a spanking. Accept it as your just punishment or it becomes a beating.”
If you were one of the compartmentalized government agents who received this letter, would you consider Menard to be threatening you? It should be clear to you now that for all of his New Age-type rhetoric, Menard is only interested in getting revenge against the government because they kidnapped his daughter; Menard even dedicates this book to her, saying “Dedicated to Elizabeth Anne Elaine; I miss you.” While I empathize with any parent whose child was kidnapped by the government, that does not somehow give them license to misinterpret the law and then portray that misinformation as if it were the truth to other dissidents, so as to convince them that there might be a likely remedy to help them secure their Liberty.
In 2009, Chris Geo tried to ask Menard what the status was about Elizabeth, but Menard refused to answer. You should keep in mind that he had already been denied visitation rights when another Ministry agent, Robert Gordon, used Elizabeth’s mother as leverage against Menard. It is disingenuous for Menard to refuse to answer Geo’s question because he has made the kidnapping of his daughter a political issue, even going so far as to create The Elizabeth Anne Elaine Society.
Putting aside whatever may be his ulterior motives, I would like to challenge Menard’s assertions regarding his interpretation of some legal terms. Menard says:
“According to Black’s Law dictionary, ‘a human being is not a person because he is a human being, but because rights and duties have been ascribed to him. Specifically, the person is the legal subject or substance of which rights and duties are attributes. But not every human being is a person, as was the case in Old England when there were slaves’. You see, you as a human being have certain inalienable human rights. Your person has certain inalienable civil rights. Believe it or not, you are not the one paying taxes, your person is. Its not you that votes, your person does. You don’t get a ticket, your person does. The best way to imagine it is to imagine a human wearing a coat. The human being is the ‘man’ or ‘human being’ or a ‘natural person’. The coat represents the ‘legal person’. The two together is referred to as ‘individual.’ (Indivisible duo).”
I don’t know where he got that definition from, but Black’s Law Dictionary (2nd ed.) defines a “person” as:
“A human being considered as capable of having rights and of being charged with duties; while a ‘thing’ is the object which rights may be exercised.”
Black’s goes onto distinguish between natural and artificial persons. Ballantine’s and Bouvier’s respective law dictionaries corroborate this, with Bouvier’s further stating that:
“This word is applied to men, women, and children, who are called natural persons. In law, man and person are not exactly synonymous terms. Any human being is a man, whether he be a member of society or not, whatever may be the rank he holds, or whatever may be his age, sex, etc. A person is a man considered according to the rank he holds in society, with all the rights to which the place he holds entitles him, and the duties which it imposes. It is also used to denote a corporation which is an artificial person. But when the word “Persons” is spoken of in legislative acts, natural persons will be intended, unless something appears in the context to show that it applies to artificial persons.” [emphasis added]
In light of the fact that even Menard concedes that humans are “natural persons,” then why does he insist that legislative statutes don’t apply to them (and by extension, the so-called “Freemen-on-the-Land”)? Bouvier’s Law Dictionary just stated that natural persons are subject to statutory obedience; is Menard concealing this fact, or does he just simply not know? He also seems to split hairs where there are none:
“Police need TWO things; name and date of birth. It is those two things which define a person and with which they can claim the existence of one. You can distinguish between a legal and lawful name and provide ONLY a lawful one.”
Black’s defines the word “lawful” as:
“Legal; warranted or authorized by the law; having the qualifications prescribed by law; not contrary to nor forbidden by the law. The principle distinction between the terms ‘lawful’ and ‘legal’ is that the former contemplates the substances of law, the latter the form of law. To say of an act that it is ‘lawful’ implies that it is done or performed in accordance with the forms and usages of law, or in a technical manner…[f]urther, the word ‘lawful’ more clearly implies an ethical content than does ‘legal.’ The latter goes no further than to denote compliance, with positive, technical, or formal rules; while the former usually imports a moral substance or ethical permissibility.”
In other words, it could be inferred that everything which is “legal” is also “lawful,” but not everything that is “lawful” is also “legal,” for the simple reason that legality is procedurally focused and is thus much more limited that lawfulness, which does have license to concern itself with judging matters of morals and ethics. So, for Menard to claim that you should give a “lawful name” and not your “legal name,” is patently absurd on its face. Additionally, Menard claims that the word “society” can only be a specifically named organization of some kind, and thus statutes don’t apply to the so-called Freemen because they are not members of any society (although many are members of the World Freeman Society, so figure that one out). Bouvier’s Law Dictionary (6th ed.) states:
“A society is a number of persons united together by mutual consent, in order to deliberate, determine, and act jointly for some common purpose. Societies are either incorporated and known to the law, or unincorporated, of which the law does not generally take notice. By civil society is usually understood a state, a nation, or a body politic.”
While I will concede that a society may in fact be a specifically named organization, it is not limited to that, for it could also refer to the body politic. Unless the so-called Freemen are going to claim they are excluded from the body politic (which would be a trick for them to argue, because at least several of them seem to be ardent Canadian nationalists, including Menard himself), statutes do apply to them, as well as by virtue of the fact that they are natural persons (unless they want to argue that they are not human).
Ultimately, more important than misunderstanding basic legal terminology, or holding deep-seated grudges against “child welfare” agencies, is whether it is possible to deny consent to be governed. Menard seems to assume that such consent is individual rather than collective, so the focus then becomes whether there is a legal way of doing so that the government would respect. Menard admits:
“I have looked for someone in the government who would care to dispute our right to deny consent, and was unsuccessful. I spoke with Attorneys in the AG’s office who confirmed it for me, although it was like pulling teeth from a rabid wolverine with a water balloon…”
Humorous imagery aside, Menard then claims that the procedure to revoke such consent lies in filing a Notice of Understanding and Intent and a Claim of Right (NOUICOR). Gauging that the latest publication year for this book was 2004, it would seem to be the case that Veronica Chapman borrowed Menard’s idea, since her book was published in 2010. Menard’s justification for filing a NOUICOR is as follows:
“Canada is a Common Law jurisdiction. What this means is you have the ability to establish rights merely by claiming they exist. Give proper Notice to those who may be affected and they have 30 days to raise an issue or express a dispute. If they fail to do so, they agree the rights mentioned exist and may be exercised lawfully. Any court in the land will recognize and support your rights, if properly established. Actually all the rights you have exist because they went through this process in one way or another.”
Section 39 of the Criminal Code of Canada provided for a “claim of right” that would, if simply invoked (according to Menard), would create a “lawful excuse” for an individual to disobey the government and not be coercively punished for it. Unfortunately for Menard and his “Freeman” buddies, Section 39 was repealed in 2012. So much for NOUICORs, although you can still view Menard’s own NOUICOR, if for no other reason that for shits and giggles. Perhaps Menard and the other Freemen will be grandfathered in somehow, but any newer Canadians trying to file this legal document would be shit out of luck.
Robert-Arthur: Menard’s Bursting Bubbles of Government Deception is an intriguing yet misleading look at what purports to be a study into the common law. Like Croft and Chapman, Menard assumes that he too suffers from capitis dimunitio whenever his name is completely capitalized (such as ROBERT ARTHUR MENARD), despite the fact that he provides absolutely no evidence that such “good appearance” of his name is evidence of an artificial person or that the existence of such a person constitutes a loss of liberty. Despite the fact that the United States government has consistently rejected this line of argumentation in United States v. Frech, United States v. Washington, and United States v. Ford, Menard advises his readers to do the following at a traffic stop:
“Let’s say you are stopped by a cop. He asks for your name. You want to ensure you give him that which identifies the human being and not merely the legal entity. Write it down on a piece of paper like this: John-Adams: Doe. Use the proper capitalization and punctuation. Remember, that piece of paper is your property, and he better return it when you ask for it. Also, he will have to put the name in the computer the way you wrote it and their equipment is not set up for that. If he tries putting in anything but what you showed him, he is unlawfully trying to create joinder between you and some other person. He has no right to do that. It also establishes that you are a human being, not a person and he has to play in that sand box and act as a Peace Officer. Until you show them a Driver’s License, they have no right to act in a Law Enforcement capacity.”
It is because of recommendations like this I have to call Menard’s claims what they are – hogwash. He assumes that government is somehow not coercive, and that by filing mystical paperwork with the right combination of magical words, then all of us can escape tyranny absolutely and completely peacefully, as he himself described it during his first major lecture of the same name, Bursting Bubbles of Government Deception, which went viral on the Internet and is the only reason anybody cares what this crazy Canadian is alleging to be true in the common law countries, including the United States (never mind the fact that in this lecture, Menard discourages his audience from describing themselves as natural persons, which contradicts what he said in the book, as I’ve already mentioned). I wouldn’t be surprised if there was more to debunk, such as Victoria Joy’s Notary Public Protest Method or his promotion of something called “acceptance for value” that is allegedly part of the so-called Redemption process, but I think what I have said thus far regarding this book calls his entire zeitgeist into serious question.
The Last Bastille 