My next-door neighbor has affixed a Gadsden Flag to his minivan.<\/p>\n
It could be worse, I suppose. Ten years ago I’d have looked at the Gadsden Flag<\/a> or the Pine Tree Flag<\/a> (a white flag with a pine tree and the words “An Appeal to Heaven”) and thought the person was a history junkie. Today I look at them and think, “Well, at least it’s not the Confederate battle flag or an upside-down American flag.”<\/p>\n Which I think shows how these Revolutionary War-era flags have been appropriated — or reclaimed, as I suspect Tea Partiers would say — as symbols of opposition, even rebellion, against the federal government. But if the Confederate battle flag is more familiar and more obvious as a rebellious symbol, the Gadsden Flag is more covert because it’s so obscure. Maybe that makes it more socially acceptable?<\/p>\n Suffice it to say, the historian in me has a little “squick” when I see a Gadsden Flag. (And the atheist in me wants to curl into a fetal ball when I see a Pine Tree flag; there’s a house nearby that flies one.) People are free to fly what they want, even the Confederate battle flag, but the message that’s sent isn’t always a positive one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My next-door neighbor has affixed a Gadsden Flag to his minivan. It could be worse, I suppose. Ten years ago I’d have looked at the Gadsden Flag or the Pine Tree Flag (a white flag with a pine tree and the words “An Appeal to Heaven”) and thought the person was a history junkie. TodayContinue reading “The Symbolism of Old Flags”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29569,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[126],"tags":[4065,4237,4238,253,742],"class_list":["post-29568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history","tag-american-history","tag-gadsden-flag","tag-pine-tree-flag","tag-revolutionary-war","tag-tea-party","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29568\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/29569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}