Once, resisting the administrative state might have meant moving to a remote cabin and trying to live off the land. These days, it can start with an online payment and a few coaching sessions.
Kristin LaHargoue, a Utah influencer who uses the name “Minister Veda,” has built a business around telling parents that registering their children with the government is an attack on parental freedom. Her social media posts show her family traveling overseas with children who lack birth certificates or Social Security numbers.
For $997, LaHargoue offers individual coaching on getting a passport for a child who has not been registered, including advice on dealing with State Department officials. A downloadable guide, priced at $497, offers a less expensive route through the same paperwork.
Parents may make these choices, but their children are the ones who have to live with the consequences.
Off the record
Sarah Ashley Townsend grew up with a mother who rejected government records, leaving Townsend without a birth certificate or Social Security number. She was largely cut off from ordinary parts of society. At 16, she struggled repeatedly to get a driver’s license. Years later, she learned that efforts to sort out her documents had not fixed everything. When she had a son, officials could not confirm her birth records, and his birth certificate had to be amended twice.
At 22, shortly after giving birth, Townsend was collecting notarized documents around Maryland so her son could get the paperwork her own mother had never obtained for her.
The idea of keeping children outside official records has a long history. It can be traced in part to William Potter Gale, a former Army lieutenant colonel who founded Posse Comitatus in Southern California around 1970. Gale argued that federal authority was illegitimate and that county sheriffs held the highest lawful power. His followers rejected federal taxes and claimed they could resist government officials.
Later sovereign-citizen movements developed elaborate theories about secret contracts with the government, invented legal identities and ways to exempt oneself from ordinary laws. Some members filed bogus liens against judges and public officials, using paperwork to attack the institutions they opposed. Others rejected courts, taxes and government authority, with some cases ending in violence.
The basic promise has barely changed: reality can supposedly be bent if you know the right phrases and refuse to accept rules that apply to everyone else.
Monetizing paranoia
Today’s influencers have replaced remote gatherings and photocopied manifestos with polished online brands. Minister Dionne, for instance, sells a “Status Correction” package for $555. Marisse Vista offers a “Sovereign Conception Program” for $7,777, with services described as ancestral clearing and womb activation. It sounds outlandish, but it also fits an online world where people can turn suspicion into a product.
I’m not a fan of needless bureaucracy, and parents should be able to make thoughtful choices for their children. But the claim that a birth certificate turns a baby into government property rests on a legal theory courts have repeatedly rejected. Its adherents argue that a birth certificate creates a separate identity the government can use as collateral, and that people can escape government authority by disavowing that identity. There is no credible legal basis for the claim, though it continues to be sold as fact.
These businesses promise rebellion. In practice, they can leave families buried in paperwork.
There is a legitimate process for people who do not have a standard birth certificate to demonstrate citizenship when applying for a passport. The State Department may accept other evidence, such as baptismal or school records, entries in a family Bible, or affidavits. The process exists to help people who genuinely lack conventional records, not to provide a loophole for avoiding government authority.
LaHargoue and others present opting out of government records as a path to independence. Yet they still want the benefits those systems provide, including the ability to travel internationally. After rejecting standard documents, parents have to gather alternatives and ask the government they distrust to issue a passport.
The supposed escape from the administrative state still depends on the state approving your passport.
Sovereign headache
One woman who bought LaHargoue’s materials eventually secured a passport for her infant without a birth certificate. She submitted baptismal records, a family Bible, an affidavit and a newspaper birth announcement. After a lengthy exchange with officials, the application was approved.
So parents are paying hundreds of dollars to work through a complicated government process created by their decision to avoid a much simpler one.
A family lawyer in New York has seen more parents try to reject or undo their children’s official identification documents. A law enforcement consultant has also described drivers refusing to show identification because they say they are “traveling,” not driving. Skepticism toward government can be reasonable. Building a life around a fantasy of complete independence, especially when it creates problems for children, is something else. Freedom matters, but it does not eliminate consequences.
When a child grows up and struggles to open a bank account, get a driver’s license, rent a home, attend college or find work, the person who sold the advice may be nowhere to be found. The parent might feel briefly like an anti-establishment hero. The child is left with years of trying to prove to institutions that they are who they say they are—and that they exist at all.
