Okay, well, maybe not.

"The Kingdom of Cascadia" is a thought experiment I've been carrying on since the late 1980s, kind of a laboratory in which to try out various ideas for how a government ought to be structured (and whether one ought to exist at all). It's also an excuse for designing a lot of flags.

My Cascadia is not a role-playing game, a separatist movement, or a "micro-nation." Nor is it a way to make money through the sale of passports, stamps, and "titles of nobility." I suppose it's in part a mental protest against obnoxious and oppressive government.

If I could instantly make the Kingdom of Cascadia real, then -- in the famous words of Leonard E. Read -- "I'd push the button." But am I doing anything to make this flight of fancy in particular come to pass? Not really, no.

However, thanks to my lovely bride, I do have an honest-to-gosh Cascadian flag. And personally, I find that really cool.

It's also nice, when I see some Stupid Government Trick on the TV news -- and pretty much everything on the TV news these days is a Stupid Government Trick -- to be able to say, "That would never happen in Cascadia!"

So, where or what is Cascadia?

The name "Cascadia" isn't original to me. I had originally thought to call the Kingdom "New Columbia," after the Columbia River, the Canadian province of British Columbia, and the fact that the northern part of the Oregon Territory was going to be named the Territory of Columbia (some congressman amended the name to Washington at the last minute "to avoid confusion" with the District of Columbia ... a.k.a the city of Washington!). But "New Columbia" is one of the proposed names for the post-statehood District of Columbia, which somewhat dimmed its attractiveness to me. "Cascadia" was an obvious next choice.

The word Cascadia, of course, derives from the Cascade Mountains, a range in the western part of Washington and Oregon. It extends into California, where it's known as the Sierra Nevada, and Canada, where it becomes the Coast Mountains. (The Cascades, in turn, derive their name either from the many waterfalls that form in wet weather, or because the early explorers crossed over the mountains at the cascades of the Columbia River.)

Cascadia as a geographic term generally refers to the area west of the Cascade Mountains.

This region is particularly attractive to people who want to try alternative government and social arrangements. From Ernest Callenbach's Ecotopia in 1975 to any number of other Cascadias on the Net today, a lot of people who have ideas for fixing things seem to want to try them out up here.

I can safely say, though, that mine is the only anarcho-monarchist Cascadia there is.

For my purposes, Cascadia is a confederation occupying the places known in the real world as Oregon, Washington, Idaho, British Columbia, the Yukon Territory, and Alaska.