Challenge: describe "your" country

[dead0man]

dead0LAN (pronounced ded O lan, but it's typed with a zero...damn it) is a loose Federation, mostly made up of the states and regions surrounding the fatherland.  The Kingdom of Dead was an ancient regime, based around farming, freedom and fu....reproducing.  Several hundred years ago a neighboring state (Alabamia) was involved in a slave revolt and asked the Kingdom of Dead to assist in putting down the revolt.  The Old Council (at the time a select group of elders voted into the Council by the elders of every village, town and city) discussed it and decided the slaves were on the right side and we promptly invaded and killed most of the Alabamians and put the slaves in charge and left.  They were weak and were promptly invaded by the Kent Ucky Fiefdom of Lexington.  The slaves in Alabamia were not prepared and were faring badly and asked the Kingdom of Dead for help.  The Old Council discussed again and again we decided to help the slaves.

Long story slightly shorter, The Kingdom of Dead found itself protectorate over former slavery ran nations, now ran by the slaves.  We also managed to free serfs in Te-has, homosexuals in The Land of Utes, hippies around Lincolnlog Lake that were being persecuted by the lawyers, businessmen and other Soots that were migrating from lands east and a band of the Bleeding Heart tribe from the west were giving hell to the fine nuclear families of Makota.  And that's how the Federation was birthed. 

Each nation in the Federation has near complete autonomy.  There are only a few absolute rules that they must follow:
1.the people in your country must be allowed to leave if they want
2.war between member nations is right out
3.each member nation must protect the basic civil liberties of everyone inside it's borders, to include, but not necessarily limited to:
a.freedom of speech
b.freedom of press
c.freedom of religion
d.freedom of whom to marry

That's pretty much it.  If Alabamia wants hardcore socialism, good luck to you.  If the Land of Utes wants to ban the ownership of firearms, knock yourself out.  If Kent Ucky wants to have no military and spend all their money on building tall ivory towers to honor their gods, enjoy.  Freedom, it's what is important.

Any nation on the planet can ask to join or just for our assistance, but obviously we can't guarantee protection to peoples on the other side of the globe, but we'll do what we can.

The Kingdom of Dead is ultimately in charge, but its not a true Kingdom.  Each year a King is chosen from an approved list.  Anybody can be put on the King List, but they must be recommended by a member of the New Council (NC).  The NC is made up two "houses", the upper house, where each nation gets one minister (except for KoD, which gets two) and the lower house, which is really more of a loony bin.  There is one minister in the lower house for every 10,000 citizens.  What makes one a citizen or not I will get to in a minute.  Ministers in the upper house can put up to 10 names on the list, whereas minsters in the lower house only get 1.  The NC will then vote to shrink the normally long list down to something more manageable by removing the least likely Kings.  We like to get it somewhere between 10 and 20.  At which point the potential kings are asked if they'd be willing to be king and the ones that are must prepare a personal oath and a list of goals they'd like to accomplish as King.  These documents are brought together for each potential king, copied and distributed to every citizen.  2 weeks later the citizens vote.  A month later the new king takes his seat on the Dead Throne.

Not everybody is a citizen.  First, you must reach the age of maturity, this varies for all and some people never reach it (the mentally feeble, the unwilling).  There is a simple test one must pass before one may be of age (almost nobody that attempts it fails it).  Once you've past the test, reached the age of at least 13 and have become old enough to procreate you are eligible to become a citizen.  This also requires testing, only its more onerous and there are many more failures.  There is a civics section (that tests their knowledge of how our political system works), there is a morals section (it doesn't approve or not of your morals, it's just makes sure you ain't a bigot...of course people lie.  Questions are along the lines of "Homosexuality may be right or wrong to me, but they are people and they have the same rights as anybody else.  true or false").  Only citizens can vote, only citizens can be officers in the military (there are foreign exceptions and the occasional waiver for non-citizen locals) and only citizens can be minsters or king.  Citizens do pay a slightly higher income tax than non-citizenry.

The income tax is progressive and relatively simple.  Nobody is taxed up to 20% above the poverty level at which point a 10% flat tax is applied to all income between that number and $100k.  A flat tax of 15% for every dollar made between $100k and $500k and going up 5% for every half a million more money made.  Capping at 70%.  The taxes are probably a little high right now, but that's because we're still paying off the debt from the last war against the Soots from Neo Yawk.  Once the govt has 10 years worth of surplus funds, the taxes will drop back to reasonable levels.  The revenue is used to run the govt, schools, healthcare and the military. Roads (at least those inside the original Kingdom, the other nations can do what they want with their roads) are paid for by a local fuel tax (we will have to figure something else out soon as we switch to electric).

Political parties are allowed, of course, but ones political affiliation does not go on ballots or with the information in a potential kings oath or goals.

Race is meaningless, so we don't count it, so we don't know what the racial breakdown is...taken as a whole, we are very diverse.  Taken as individual nations, much less so.

Religion is allowed, but the culture (at least in the original kingdom) is mostly apathetic to it.  Some of the new nations are very religious though.  There is no separation of church and state, unless that particular state wants it that way (most do).


So yeah, in dead0LAN guns can be banned, healthcare is free(ish) and taxes are often high.