Can a Country Have No Name?

CAN A COUNTRY HAVE NO NAME?

That’s what my wife and I are trying to find out. We have filed for secession from the United States of America. We don’t want to join any other country, and we don’t even see any reason to assume a new name, it’s just that we no longer wish to be governed by the laws and government of the United States. We do not seek conflict, and we certainly don’t want to alienate our neighbors, we’re just tired of the governments of the United States and its subsidiaries (Michigan, Antrim County, Mancelona Township) and they way they treat us. We love the Declaration of Independence (See Below), the Bill of Rights, and the principles and ideals of democracy. It’s the way the courts, Congress, the President, multinational corporations, and even local officials interpret the Constitution and their laws and ordinances that we no longer wish to be a party to. We watch in disgust at the infantile and self-serving displays of deceit and immorality now being practiced within American government; we no longer see any adherence to or respect for the lofty tenets and high principles manifested in the Spirit of 1776. So we’re seceding. Just us. And, of course, our 29.5 acre farm off of Cinterly Road—the same 29.5 acres farmed by my father and his father all the way back to 1896 when my grandfather paid for it in cash with the earnings he’d accumulated from working in the timber industry. We no longer wish to have the protections of government of the once great United States of America. We just want to be left alone to continue doing what we’ve been doing for over a century: farming.
     We’re nearly self-sufficient and self-sustained here. We are off-the grid and fairly energy-independent with our wind turbine, solar panels, eleven acres of woods that provide fuel to heat our wood stove and a fairly lucrative maple sugaring business. We have two wells—one of which provides water to an underground cistern-system, which then provides radiant heat and cooling to our house. Our fields and gardens provide us with nearly everything we require. Our main concern is that the US will remain on friendly terms with us so that we can freely cross the border in order to visits friends and family and continue to trade with local and mail-order businesses. We have no need of any financial connections to the US. We are willing to trust in the goodness of others and in the will of God for our safety. My wife and I have not subscribed to health or dental care or insurances for nigh on twenty years; we have always paid cash for any local services needed (which we also hope will be allowed to continue). We see no need to create our own currency—especially seeing that so many countries in the world are converting to the American Dollar for their own currency. We hope the US government won’t mind. Within our own little country we really won’t have any need to do that kind of business. My wife and I are more than happy to help each other out without the expectation of exchange or accounting. We also see no need to set up any form of “government” seeing as we’re pretty set in our ways and can manage to settle our petty disputes through interpersonal dialogue. We don’t expect to want to do any business with any foreign countries other than the above-mentioned private businesses in the United States. We have no debt, do not own credit cards, operate quite happily without a telephone, have never owned a television. But we have become rather fond of the Internet. It has, in fact, become our primary method of contact with our children and grandchildren. But, all in all, we really just want to be left alone. We are tired of being unlistened to, guilty-by-association, participants in the rape and plunder of the planet and its peoples. For years we tried to figure out how we could direct our tax dollars so that the taxes we dutifully paid would not be used for war and the military industrial complex.
      For years we begged our government representatives—even paid law experts—to find a way we could “earmark” our tax dollars for specific causes that we felt supportive of. To no avail. Now, rather than continue to be given no choice, rather than continue to have to watch the erosion of our Constitutional rights, rather than have to submit without choice or recourse to the abusive and inhumane foreign and domestic policies of a government which is controlled by money, not “we the people,” we have decided to leave. No more taxes. No more guilt and shame at being a unwilling participant in the atrocities and crimes against nature and humanity perpetrated on behalf of greed and profiteering. We Declare our Independence. But, must we have a name? If so, why not “The Bisher Farm” as it has always been?

WE THE PEOPLE, formerly of 1111 Cinterly Road, Mancelona, Michigan, USA, do solemnly declare our independence from the governments and agencies of those United States of America. When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the Earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident:
 That all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,
 That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, by men, for men, and that these governments should derive their just powers from the consent of the governed,
 That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter, discard or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly experience has shown that mankind is more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, it is their moral obligation, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.
 Such has been the patient sufferance of this Couple; and such is now the necessity that compels us to cast off our former systems of government. The history of the present government of the United States is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over its inhabitants. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world. The United States government and its agencies and cohorts have:
 Continuously created laws which favor and benefit unnatural persons, called “corporations,” over that of the natural persons it claims to serve and from whom it supposedly derives its authority;
 Increasingly chosen to interpret the United States and Michigan constitutions and their laws in ways which grant favor and lenience to the moneyed privileged and to unnatural persons, while at the same time ignoring or even denying the Life, Liberty, and pursuit of Happiness of the working classes;
 Allowed the influence of representatives of the moneyed to become the dominant influences with regards to the writing of, passage of, and interpretation of law and policy;
 Closed its ears to the voices of the people, of the world;
 Chosen to prioritize foreign policy issues and spending over that of domestic needs;
 Chosen to pursue a policy of imperialistic perpetual war and now, as result, a state akin to martial law at home;
 Repeatedly and consistently chosen to favor capitalism over democracy;
 Repeatedly and consistently chosen to grant clemency or amnesty to the crimes and criminal acts of the rich and powerful;
 Turned a blind eye to, allowed, and even sanctioned criminal acts in domestic and foreign policy, especially in the areas of rights of privacy,
 Repeatedly and consistently chosen to not protect contract property as its laws and constitutions have promised to do;


We, therefore, Toril Narissa Fooker-Bisher and William Andrew Bisher, III, wife and husband and co-inhabitants of the Bisher Farm, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by authority of, our selves, solemnly publish and declare, that this farm and its inhabitant are, and of Right ought be, a Free and Independent state, that we are absolved from all Allegiance to the U.S. governments, and that all political connection between us and the state of Michigan, the United States of America, and all other states, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as a Free and Independent State, we have full Power to do all the Acts and things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.