Liberland

I was enjoying an evening in the 1990s with family and friends when the talk turned to politics, probably with a little help from me. I had a chip on my shoulder; I was looking for one of those “And how would your little imaginary fairyland work in real life?” smirks in response to some statement that voluntary interaction is better than coerced “compassion.” I won’t slander my interlocutors, one of whom reads this blog, by saying that they extended me the discourtesy I was looking for – in fact, I remember being rightly upbraided for my own lack of civility (imagine that!) during the conversation – but I did eventually find what I was looking for, probably in the form of something like “we support government because we really are peaceable people and we want what is best for everyone.”

At that point, the Keystone Kop sprang into action.

“Peaceable? Really? If a bunch of us got together and bought outright the least valuable square mile in the United States and asked if we could please, pretty please, pretty please with sugar on it [I probably didn’t say this, but it’s the best I can reconstruct] just be left alone to try life without government ‘benefits’ like ‘free education’ and Social Security and retirement, etc., in exchange for not paying taxes, I can guarantee that the feds would be out in force to shut us down. They would meet any forcible resistance on our part with greater force and kill us if they felt they needed to. In fact, no matter where we go in the world, there will be people like you there to force us into your system.”

(A good friend recently loaned me a copy of How to Win Friends and Influence People. How do you suppose he knew I hadn’t already read it?)

I didn’t know it at the time, but that that was precisely what the US government had done in Waco to the Branch Davidians a few years before. Reasoning that the children in the Davidian compound were in some kind of danger, federal troops surrounded it and firebombed it, barbecuing the children they were supposedly rescuing.

A more recent example of what I was talking about has come to my attention, and I’m here to share it with my vast readership.

It seems that the Danube River, as it wends its way between Serbia and Croatia, has changed its course many times over the years. The border between the two countries goes back decades, if not centuries. When the river changes course, land that was on the Serbian side of the river is then on the Croatian side of the river, and vice versa. You can see this on the map. 

Do you see the green section called Siga? This is what seems to be formerly Serbian territory now located on the Croatian side of the river. As you might imagine, it’s not particularly valuable land. Here is a satellite view of the area outlined in black on the first map and a detailed view of Siga itself.

It looks to me like land that is susceptible to flooding, good for growing scrub trees and that’s about it. While the Danube is international water, it’s a really long way from Siga to the mouth of the Danube, so even if the river is navigable that far, shipping does not seem to be a good way to get goods there.

Again, it’s pretty much mud and scrub brush, as can be seen in the last minute of this video:

And literally no one in either Serbia or Croatia had any plans to do anything with it.

Enter Vít Jedlička, a Czech national who wanted to have his own “little imaginary fairyland” (not his words) off where he could live as a free man and literally be no bother to anyone. He wanted to develop the three square miles of Siga, land no one else wanted, into what he calls the country of Liberland.

As I predicted lo those many years ago would happen in such a context, once he went through normal channels to obtain title to the land and establish diplomatic relations, the Croatians suddenly became very interested in the land. They have blockaded the entryways and arrested people trying to enter, even if they enter by crossing the river from Serbia. (Note that the official boundary places Siga in Serbia.)

Look again at the larger context of Siga. Look at the size of Serbia and Croatia compared to Siga.

What would a country as large as either of them have to fear from a rebel group based in Siga that was sworn to overthrow them? That would be the stuff of Leonard Wibberley’s The Mouse that Roared. So why are the Croatian authorities so afraid of a few dozen idealists whose motto is “To Live and Let Live”?

They clearly have nothing to lose if he fails, so they must be terrified that he might succeed. They are afraid that Jedlička, beginning with nothing but a bunch of mud and scrub trees, will show the world that a just, free, and prosperous society can be built without all the pretense and fraud, not to mention the theft and murder, that have characterized the state since Nimrod. And once Toto pulls the curtain back and all can see what frauds those who pull the levers to frighten the ignorant with smoke and fire are, the loss of their gravy train may be the least of their worries.

Do you think the response in Washington, capital of the “land of the free,” home of Operation Jade Helm, whose motto is “Master the Human Domain,” would be any different?

As the saying is these days, Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!