The sovereign citizen movement is a loosely organized group of individuals who share some common beliefs and behaviors. They believe that they are not under the jurisdiction of the federal government and consider themselves exempt from U.S. law. Sovereign citizens may appeal to people facing financial or legal difficulties or wishing to resist perceived government oppression. Most schemes promoted by sovereign citizens are ways to avoid paying taxes, ignore laws, eliminate debts, or extract money from the government. Sovereign citizen arguments have no basis in law and have never been successful in any court. Sovereign citizens may prefer to label themselves as "state nationals", "constitutionalists", "freemen", "natural people", "living people", "private persons", or as people "seeking the Truth" or "living on the land". Sovereign citizen ideology justifies their goals by claiming that at one time there was an American utopia governed by English "common law," a utopia in which every citizen was a "sovereign," and there were no oppressive laws, taxes, regulations or court orders. However, a conspiracy gradually subverted this system, replacing it with an illegitimate successor. Different sovereign citizen theorists have varying versions of this progression. Sovereign citizens constitute a large and energetic extremist group.