Before you can understand that everyone is born sovereign, you need to understand what we mean by a sovereign individual. Please read "The Sovereign Individual Paradigm" and then come back here to continue. (Use your browser's "Back" button to return to this page.)
Now that you have a working understanding of what a sovereign individual is, how can we say that everyone is born sovereign? Consider the statement:
In the absence of force or fraud, no one can make decisions for you without your consent for, otherwise, how would they ensure that you abided by the decision?
Now imagine that you are a newborn child, just out of the womb. You are not yet capable of making reasoned decisions. For the first few months of your life, your parent will make all of your decisions for you. Your parent will decide when you eat, what you eat, what you wear, where you go, etc. Does this mean that the newborn child is a slave? No, it merely means that it is dependent on someone else for its survival.
According to Webster, a slave is:
a person who is the property of and wholly subject to another;
whereas a dependent is:
relying on someone or something else for aid, support, etc.
Which of these definitions do you think better describes the state of a newborn child? We certainly cannot say that a newborn child is the property of the parent. If the newborn child is the property of the parent, then the child can be sold, destroyed, or abandoned without consequence. Since this cannot be done, the child must not be the property of the parent. We cannot even say that the newborn child is wholly subject to the parent. While this may be true in the beginning, it does not last for very long. Soon the child will be challenging the parent at every turn. This is, in fact, a part of the process of becoming a human individual. And if we cannot say that the child is the property of the parent, who participated in the creation of the new life, how can we say that the child is the property of the state, who had nothing to do with the creation of the new life.
We can, however, say that the newborn child is "relying on someone or something else for aid, support, etc." In fact, if no one provides such aid and support, the newborn child will die. That's about as dependent as you can get.
The state, by the way, defined as any modern government, considers everyone, both adults and children, to be slaves of the state. For example, the state assumes the power to take your children and place them with someone else. The state assumes the power to force anyone to participate in wars, thereby placing themselves into mortal danger. The state assumes the power to kill anyone that violates any of it's millions of rules and regulations. Even though this is nonsense, the state still assumes it and that assumption has killed millions of people in this century alone.
We have shown that a newborn child is not a slave even though the state considers it so. If the child is not a slave, then what is it? The opposite of slavery is sovereignty. Since the child is not a slave, then the child must be a sovereign. And if a newborn child is sovereign, then how can we deny sovereignty to a fully-functioning independent adult? And if we are all sovereign, how do we end up with so much slavery in the world? Before we attempt to answer that question, let's examine the statement that freedom, or slavery, is in your mind.
Copyright at Common Law, West El Paso Information Network, 1998