Anissimov asked about neoreactionaries answering more practical questions, so I’ll float a few ideas.
Reservations
There are semi-sovereign communities in North America: Indian reserves. I’m not sure how these work in the US, but in Canada they are free (more or less) from provincial law and subject to federal law. While I won’t get into the specifics, Indian reserves do have some limited sovereignty. The laws would have to be looked over by a qualified lawyer but it might be possible for a reactionary community to strike a deal with a reserve to use a portion of their land free from many of the more intrusive laws.
Western and Northern Canada
Western and Northern Canada has an abundance of cheap, fertile land. If you’re willing to live an hour or two from the city you can get 160 acres of farmland for $80k or less. You can get treed land for cheaper; I’ve seen 40 acres for as little as $12k. Property taxes for these are usually a few hundreds dollars a year.
I’m not sure the cost of land in Idaho, but if that doesn’t pan out, the Canadian Prairies are cheap.
Conquering Nations
Mike asks, “what kind of private military force would it take to occupy and hold several islands in the South Pacific?”
For this, I would suggest looking to Bob Denard. He was a French mercenary who throughout the 1960’s-90’s repeatedly repeatedly involved himself in various African conflicts. He particularly focused on the small island nation of the Comoros, which he more or less controlled from 1978-1989. The coup that put him into power required 43 men.
Depending on where the island was and its inhabitants, a relatively small, but organized force, could take control of a small island nation. The main problem would be avoiding having a major power intervene. Denard’s plans all fell apart when France decided to reign him in.
I know Indian Law, and the reservations idea wouldn’t work in the US. All land deals have to be approved by the Department of the Interior. It won’t happen.
The best one can hope for is to ‘go Amish’, or ‘go Hasidic’, or, in some areas where they are the vast majority, ‘go Mormon’ – which means that, yes, you can buy a bunch of land someplace and set up a voluntary community with wildly different social norms, but you wouldn’t be allowed to actually set up a government which enshrined those rules in coercive law, and so wouldn’t have any recourse except social ostracization pressures if people broke the rules.
The biggest problems you’d face are not so much keeping the good people in, but keeping bad people out. If your community is successful, people who don’t necessary share your values will want to move there, and you have no legal way to stop them, no borders and no immigration control. It’s all reliant on voluntary cooperation that, at the same time, is plausibly deniable if the Feds ever come by and do an investigation into housing discrimination.
What seems to work is making your community just alien or bizarre enough that it creates just enough of a barrier that discourages strangers from wanting to join unless they also want to hold themselves to your social norms.
In the three examples I cited above, highly distinctive religion is that barrier, and ethnic and linguistic difference are off the table. But people are pretty reluctant to switch religions just to live somewhere nice. You’d need to come up with a new religion that is attractive to the right people and very unattractive to the wrong people. But, like I said, the problem is when your version of the right people already tend to be religion and are unlikely to change their affiliation.
Your idea of a PMC taking over small islands reminds me of My Friend the Mercenary by James Brabazon. It’s a good read.
I can only imagine how awesome it’d be to do exactly that.