November 22
nd is Start Your Own Country Day - a celebration in honor of those free-spirited souls today and tomorrow who have declared their independence and successfully started their own countries.
Start Your Own Country Day was originally conceived the 1939 New York World's Fair at the "Building The World of
Tomorrow" event. The depression was still lingering and World
War II was building on the horizon. America needed hope, so some of the organizers of the World's Fair decided to champion freedom from bureaucratically idiocy with the first annual "Start Your Own Country Day". At first it was a big joke. I mean, who could afford to start their own country.
Oddly enough, a few hard souls have done just that.
Libertocracy is a self-described "polycentric
free enterprise government and socio-economic system whereby sovereign
individuals join together by mutual consent in a civilization that
respects and defends the freedom, dignity and rights of all people
equally." At this time their website is down, so it doesn't look like it's going too well.
The Principality of New Utopia
is a pie-in-the-sky proposed country which planst to build a quote "Oasis in the middle of the ocean: Office buildings, hotels,
theaters and shopping centers, sitting slightly above the surface of the
sea greenery and flowers, with canals of clear blue water, water taxis
and gondolas providing transportation. This is a new Country...that has
never existed before, which will be built in a moderately tropical sea, a
perfect climate, a paradise: Utopia!" The founder has apparently died and they still haven't got the thing going again.
The Conch Republic was a tongue-in-cheek secessionist movement on Key West, one of the islands of the Florida Keys in protest of a blockade of the island by the US Border Patrol.
Forvik, located on an islet in the Shetland Islands, declared an independent
Crown dependency by one Stuart Hill. Mr. Hill claims the UK breached a 1469 deal with Demnark which transferred the Shetland Islands to the Scottish crown (which doesn't really exist any longer so it's a tough argument to make).
The Global Country of World Peace is a so-called "country without borders". It was established by the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (who else). It's citizens are "loving people everywhere" and it has two capitals: one in MERU, Holland and the other in Maharishi Vedic City, Iowa.
There's even an Internet nation:
The Kingdom of Lovely. One Danny Wallace did a BBC TV series called
How to Start Your Own Country, and during the filming, established an Internet-based nation and claiming his own London flat as capital of the Kingdome of Lovely and sovereign territory.
North Dumpling Island is an island in the Fishers Island Sound. When owner David Kamen was denied permission to build a wind turbine on the
island he declared his independence and built one anyway. The island claims to be carbon neutral and holds a non-aggression pact with the U.S. that was signed by George H.W. Bush.
Outer Baldonia is a micronation established on Outer Bald Tusked Island, Nova Scotia. The place has an odd constitution that bans women from the island. It is used primarily for seasonal fishing by men who evidently want to get away from their wives.
Sealand is a World War II a monumentally ugly abandoned military facility off the coast of England. Occupied by one Paddy Roy Batres, it declared its independence in 1967. British authorities have largely ignored Paddy and his rogue nation ever since.
Many more such micronations have been started up, usually in protest of something or other and with varying degrees of success. One micronation,
The Dominion of Melchizedek was apparently created to facilitate large scale bank fraud.
Send your sweetheart a
"Start Your Own Country Day" card and make plans to create your own nation just for the two of you.
Just click on the
caption below the picture of the flag of micronation The Conch Republic. Remember, instead of printing from Google Docs, click
on "File" in the upper left corner, then select "Download" and copy the
file to your own computer. Open it with Adobe PDF Reader or whatever
PDF reader you use and print the card from there. For some reason Google
Docs doesn't handle fonts well, even though they are supposed to be
embedded in the PDF document itself.
This is a top fold card, so when it prints, be sure to tell your
printer it's in "portrait" format so you get the whole file. Flip
it
on the short side to print double-sided. This also flips the inside
upside down from the outside when you print in portrait mode, so that,
when you fold it over, the inside comes out right side up. If you're
confused, I encourage you to give it a try with a practice sheet.
© 2013 by Tom King
