Waging a Fight Against the System : Rights: Self-proclaimed ‘state citizens’ say the law allows them to renounce control by the federal government.

From his rambling home in the Box Canyon area near Simi Valley, Richard J. McDonald battles the intrusions of government with an extensive collection of law books and court cases.

Deep in this rustic and remote pocket of Ventura County, the 66-year-old former security guard has spearheaded a movement to thwart what he believes is a federal government campaign to strip away individual rights.

In faxes and newsletters and computer messages, McDonald has urged people nationwide to cut their ties to government by turning in Social Security cards, driver’s licenses and license plates.

But although McDonald has operated in relative obscurity over the past five years, the Oklahoma City bombing has thrust him and others like him into the national spotlight.

McDonald embraces many of the anti-government views apparently underlying last week’s bombing. But he insists that neither he nor members of his group espouse violence.

“My group is extremely passive,” McDonald said Monday. “We fight with knowledge, not with guns and bombs.”

McDonald and his followers are self-proclaimed “state citizens” who view themselves not as citizens of the United States, but as citizens of the Republic of California. That identity, they insist, gives them more freedom than is enjoyed by the remaining federal citizens who they say live under an abusive government.

In the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing, much attention has been focused on the anti-government “patriot movement,” whose numbers purportedly include the suspects in the attack.

But authorities say not all of its adherents promote violence or retreat to far-removed compounds. Stuck someplace in the right-wing nether world between Libertarians and Idaho survivalists, there are people who lead seemingly ordinary suburban lives but are quietly severing their ties to the government--refusing to pay taxes, returning their driver’s licenses, even declining to use conventional mailing addresses.

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Their weapon, they say, is the law. Alan Bird, a marketing analyst from Moorpark who openly tools around without a driver’s license or license plates, helps others research the law.

Such local citizens spend much of their time poring over antique law books at McDonald’s rustic, Box Canyon home.

“We don’t believe in guns,” McDonald said. “We believe in doing it through political means, through the ballot box.”

“If we did know anybody that had motivations like that, we’d be the first to turn them in,” Bird, a former Mormon missionary, said of the bombing. “There is no justification for what they did.”

State citizens do not appear to be arming themselves or others, according to local law enforcement authorities and the Anti-Defamation League of B’Nai B’rith, which has been following their meetings.

A little-known network of individualists with no formal name, state citizens subscribe to McDonald’s hardly original belief that local rights supersede federal control and that smaller government is better. Political scientists say they are among a slew of right-leaning groups cropping up around the nation that reflect growing disenchantment with government, as well as a deeply rooted American distrust of authority.

McDonald’s broad philosophy appeals to a wide array of people with different backgrounds; he claims about 5,000 followers nationwide that he reaches through computer, fax, radio and a cable TV show called “LA Lawman.”

Monthly gatherings at the Beverly Garland Holiday Inn in Studio City draw as many as 300 people. Each Sunday at noon, a much smaller group of prospective “citizens” meets at McDonald’s book-lined house to watch videotapes and listen to his ideas. He also sells $795 self-help kits, which explain how to renounce federal citizenship and defend oneself in court if arrested.

One recent, introductory gathering at his home drew a Los Angeles Unified School District teacher, a blazer-clad contracts administrator for a major film studio, and an evangelical Christian couple interested in home schooling who had driven from Washington State with their seven children.

“Don’t believe what I say,” McDonald told a rapt audience, some of whom were taking notes or videotaping the proceeding. “I’m the biggest liar God ever created. Believe what the law books say.”

The eighth-grade dropout insists that his only goal is to educate the public about the existence of two classes of citizenship in this country. The inferior, federal kind is used as an excuse to deny all sorts of rights. Lesser-known, he says, is state citizenship, which dates back to an era when the states were recognized as sovereign republics and is more closely aligned with the Founding Fathers’ intent.

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In one of the videos McDonald shows recruits--titled “Big Park”--singing police tie up a family and haul it from its home to make way for a federal park. The gleeful officials then move out all the family’s furniture, and turn the home into a ranger station.

But state citizens can protect their property rights if they know the law, McDonald says.

As a result of their legal immersion, citizens use all sorts of technical terms and make dozens of arcane distinctions between common language and what they believe was the Founding Fathers’ plan. For example, they prefer to say they “travel” rather than drive and use “conveyances” rather than cars or trucks.

A spokeswoman for the ADL said state citizens bear monitoring because some of their anti-government views overlap those of citizen militias, which espouse violent resistance to government. Some state citizens also have been known to distribute racist or anti-Semitic literature, she said.

The Ventura County Sheriff’s Department is aware of McDonald and other residents of Box Canyon and Newbury Park who publicly reject the authority of government to collect taxes or require licenses to operate motor vehicles.

But neither the Sheriff’s Department, nor the local FBI office is aware of any organized militia-style groups active in Ventura County.

“We don’t have the militant, paramilitary groups practicing in our county,” said Cmdr. Bill Wade, head of the sheriff’s special services unit. “We have individuals, but no groups.”

“We’ve had people with automatic weapons who we’ve arrested and prosecuted, but they have not been tied in with groups like the Michigan Militia,” Wade said.

Both the sheriff’s office and the FBI said they are restricted from investigating paramilitary groups unless they can show probable cause of criminal activity.

“It’s not against the law to be a member of these groups,” said Gary Auer, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Ventura County office. “Putting on camouflage outfits and walking around with guns is not against the law.”

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Nevertheless, Auer said he believes there are no militia groups in Ventura County. “To our knowledge, the closest active groups are in Nye County, Nevada.”

In late November, a Sylmar man named David J. Sanders was sentenced to six months in jail after he told a Municipal Court judge in San Fernando that he was a “sovereign white male” under the California Republic’s constitution and thus was exempt from the motor vehicle code.

Sanders, who was convicted of driving without a license, could not be reached. But his wife, Heather, said later she personally appealed to the judge and her husband’s employer in an effort to release him and make sure he still had his job and health insurance.

Heather Sanders also blamed McDonald and his citizen kits, which persuaded her husband to represent himself in court.

With a toddler at home and twins on the way, she said she sympathized with the beliefs of her husband, a 38-year-old purchasing agent, but feared the consequences.

“It was very stressful for me,” she said. “I assumed he’d only get a fine--it was his first offense. But of course, the judge threw the book at him.”

Finally released on bail pending an appeal, Sanders could have been placed on probation if only he had agreed to comply with its terms and get a driver’s license. But Sanders’ defiance left Judge L. Jeffrey Wiatt with little choice but to impose the maximum sentence.

“I can’t inquire as to their beliefs. . . . I just deal with the case in front of me,” Wiatt said. “It’s kind of hard for me to understand what their legal theories are, other than absolute nonsense.”

Although experts tend to agree with that assessment, they also note that anti-tax, anti-government movements are quintessentially American.

“There’s a long tradition in America of withdrawing from the corruption of the culture,” said Robin Einhorn, an American history professor at UC Berkeley.

“Thoreau’s Walden Pond would be one example. In the early 19th Century, there was a whole slew of these which had very complicated ideologies worked out to justify why they were doing it.”

Like Thoreau, who went to jail in protest of a tax to finance the Mexican War, Bird was also prepared to defend his beliefs behind bars.

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Still, the 37-year-old father of three admits he was nervous before his appearance in Ventura Municipal Court on Dec. 5. Word of Sanders’ sentence the week before had spread quickly along the citizens’ grapevine.

“I was scared spitless ‘cause that guy had just gone to jail the Friday before,” said Bird, who faced five counts. But he said he had the law on his side and was well-prepared.

“I sat down and read every motor vehicle law from 1905 forward. And I saw what the Legislature did and what was its intent.”

He argued that the state Department of Motor Vehicles issues driver’s licenses and vehicle registrations only to people with Social Security numbers--but that the Social Security system is voluntary.

So if someone declines to obtain a Social Security number because of political or religious beliefs, Bird argued, how can he be penalized for not carrying a driver’s license?

“It’s a legal impossibility,” said Bird. He also entered into evidence a long affidavit explaining why he has returned his license and plates to the DMV.

After a half-day trial, Judge Thomas Hutchins found Bird not guilty of driving without a license, driving without registration, and having no registration in his possession.

A fourth charge of failing to appear, the apparent result of a court computer glitch, was dismissed. Bird was convicted of a fifth count--failing to display front and rear license plates--but planned to appeal.

The official explanation for Bird’s victory is that an inexperienced prosecutor, faced with his first citizen, made a technical error. But the case is being touted by other citizens as a victory.

McDonald says he doesn’t plan to stop in traffic court, but hopes to place citizens-sponsored initiatives aimed at restoring local rights on ballots in several Western states.

His obscure group’s newfound celebrity might help. In the wake of the Oklahoma bombing, reporters came calling Monday to determine whether the man who had renounced government was a commando or the guy next door.

The canyon where he lives is known for its quirky residents and checkered past.

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Indeed, his house was once the church of a religious sect known as WFKL Fountain of the World, which founded a commune there in 1948. Ten years later, two jealous husbands who believed the sect leader was sleeping with their wives set off a bomb, killing eight people.

Near the entrance to the woodsy property, McDonald has propped a sign from the old church: “Ye who enter here enter upon holy ground.” McDonald’s white 1972 BMW is parked nearby. It bears no license plate, but affixed to the rear is this message “State Citizenship. Do you know what I mean?”

On Monday, he was interrupted by one phone call after another.

“I’ll be on the TV on four, five and six tonight,” he told one caller. “Yup, and there’s someone here now, too.”

Times staff writers Josh Meyer and Kenneth R. Weiss contributed to this story.