Go East, Young Man!

All hail Freedonia!
(Image courtesy Paramount Pictures)

Wow:

A Czech man named Vit Jedlicka proclaimed the new republic between Serbia and Croatia on the western bank of the Danube on Monday and has been doing the media rounds all week. With a land area of about 2.7 square miles, Liberland would be the world’s third-smallest country, after the Vatican City and Monaco. According to its website, it has a flag, a motto (“to live and let live”), and an official language (Czech, which seems ill-advised). Jedlicka is taking applications for citizenship, though you’ll have to apply by email because there’s no post office yet. Liberlanders must be people who:

have respect for other people and respect the opinions of others, regardless of their race, ethnicity, orientation, or religion
have respect for private ownership which is untouchable
do not have communist, nazi or other extremist past
were not punished for past criminal offences

Still a member of the Czech Republic’s libertarian, euroskeptic Party of Free Citizens, Jedlicka says he is working on writing a constitution that “significantly limits the power of politicians so they could not interfere too much in the freedoms of the Liberland nation.”

America hasn’t been the same since we closed the frontier and ran out of places to run away to — maybe the lawless areas of the Balkans, the Middle East, and someday perhaps Siberia could be made into new outlets for rugged individualists.