ON BREAK:

You live on a tropical island that used to be Fiji, but its name — and most everything else — has changed since a council of dictators seized power a few years back.

Social status is based on age, so the older people wield political power while younger ones stay dutifully in line. The ruling oligarchy permits you to have no more than four children. If you have more, they’re shipped to China by express mail. Also, you’re frequently confused about God — as the state intends you to be.

“There’s a required religion, which is agnosticism,” explained Pascal Simpkins, 16, a member of the governing party.

“Oh, and our next plan is to take over the Vatican,” added his cohort, 17-year-old Hannah Dean.

Welcome to Calnakylo, the world’s newest fascist regime, and one of many countries created last week in Stephen Harper’s U.S. government class at Orange Coast Middle College High School.

This year, Harper introduced a project to help his students understand why, in his mind, the United States is the greatest country in the world. He’s not shy about saying so, even if his job requires a certain amount of objectivity. Last week, then, he put his students into small groups and had them dream up their own governments — monarchies, dictatorships, Marxist regimes and just about everything else.

His overall message: Whatever its flaws, the American state is about as foolproof as they come.

“My hope is, if they look at what kind of government they want to be, they’ll learn about the kind of government we are,” said Harper, who has taught at Middle College for five years.

In the project, which began Tuesday, the students created countries with names and flags, and then laid out the particulars: population, territory, laws and form of government. Some of the groups used existing models, while others let their imagination run wild. One country, Peepistan, was an all-nudist regime, with a flag featuring a rainbow and clouds.

“They learned about the hippies last year, and they’re really into the idea of utopias,” Harper explained.

Most of the imagined countries were idyllic states of some kind, clothing-optional or not. Natalie Durnian and Adam Stevens, both 17, patterned their paradise after M. Night Shyamalan’s movie “The Village,” in which a tight community sequesters itself from evils in the surrounding forest. Natalie, Adam and their fellow group members placed their haven on a tropical island.

Despite the country’s remoteness, though, it wasn’t a closed state in the North Korea-style.

“People can leave if they want,” Natalie said.

“But they have to swim 1,700 miles,” Adam noted quickly.