December 7, 2006

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Eighth Grade Sovereignty and Micronational Pride

UPDATE: It turns out that Sleepy Brain has been posting about this book quite often, and asked me to link to their contest to give away a copy of the book.

Lonely Planet has released its Travel Guide To Micronations. Yes, micronations, those lovable little slices of supposed sovereignty where crackpots and geeks can become the tyrants and philosopher kings of their pre-teen dreams. Micronations, most famously the Principality Of Sealand, exist where some individual or group claim, but are denied, sovereignty over some (usually quite small) bit of land.

From the Wikipedia article, Micronations generally have a number of common features:

1. They often assert that they wish to be widely recognised as sovereign states, but are not.
2. They are small; those that claim to control physical territories are mostly of very limited extent - however the majority exist exclusively in the online world. While several micronations claim hundreds or even thousands of members, the vast majority have no more than one or two active participants.
3. Some issue government instruments such as passports, stamps, and currency, and confer titles and awards; these are rarely recognized outside of their own communities of interest.

When I heard about this book--a legitimate travel guide to micronations--and read this interview with one of its creators, pangs of nostalgia were awakened, and I was brought back all the way to eighth grade, circa 1997, when I was part of my very own micronation. For a few brief months, my friends and I literally were masters of our domain. And our domain was a thirty-yard circle around the large oak tree next to the Southern wing of Burnett Middle School.

We declared our independence under the sovereign name "Mexico II," and set about constructing our government. It was modeled after the United States government, but most of us didn't know much about Civics at that time. We had picked up snippets, for instance, we knew the order of succession should something happen to the President. And "President" is a very important title, so being Speaker Of The House--second in line for the Presidency--seemed like a pretty sweet position. I'm not positive but I think that Eric Robinson and Jordan Carpenter were President and Vice, though I don't remember which was which. Jon Cooper was Secretary Of Defense, and someone else was Speaker Of The House. All very important positions, right? Until one considers the power grab with which they let me get away; I was the entire House (Speaker excluded), the entire Senate, and the entire Supreme Court. But those positions seemed meaningless because they didn't include the word "President," nor even the prospect of ascending to that title should the President get beat up on the playground.

And so Mexico II was born. We came up with a rudimentary set of prescriptive laws regulating behavior in Mexico II. We wrote out an official Constitution--never ratified--that spelled out exactly what powers each of us had. We even had a flag, though it is long since lost.

Our coup turned out to be bloodless, and so there was unity all across the land. But little did we know, those happy times were not to last. Though we fancied ourselves free men under self-rule, in truth our little nation lived under the oppressive influence of the teachers' cruel and expansive empire. They possessed advanced weaponry in the form of referrals and grade reports, and our ragtag militia (no offense to Secretary Cooper) was no match for their indiscriminate orthodoxy. We had no choice but to pay tribute in the form of homework, and readily abandoning our home in Mexico II at a moment's notice to get to class before the bell rang. They were ruled by a cruel dictator, Principal Heard, who imposed order within all of her hinterlands through her own brand of justice.

The following year (when we were no longer at Burnett), I began dating Principal Heard's daughter, Laney, a savvy political match that cemented diplomatic relations between Mexico II and the Burnett Empire.

But that eighth-grade year at Burnett, as we constructed and regularly inhabited our very own nation, we experienced the pleasure of creation. A country is the ultimate DIY project, the ultimate hobby. And like most DIY projects, ours was eventually abandoned, our hard-won borders reclaimed by our old adversary. But Mexico II was our own little slice of supposed sovereignty, an escape every morning from what must have seemed, at the time, the horrible oppression of adolescence. In Mexico II we were free, and in control of our own destinies. At least until the morning bell rang.

I'm proud of our little experiment, and I'm excited that so many others maintain their little fantasy countries. They may not be recognized by the larger governments of the world, but they're literally holding down the forts despite them. Micronationalists are the true libertarians. And though I don't think the release of this travel guide is likely to elevate the tourism industry to the tops of micronational economies, it's nice to see them at least catalogued. It's a fitting reminder that even this nation, the United States, is an experiment in democracy and peaceful rule, and like Mexico II and all experiments, its principles are rather prone to abandonment.

Posted at December 7, 2006 12:56 AM | Comments (6)

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