Now is the Time for All Silly Buggers to Come to the Aid of Their Party

Now is the time for all silly buggers to come to the aid of their party. There are many valid labels and icons that need to be deprecated due to having been widely co-opted by some other cause that is not in accordance with the original connotations of the label or icon. A case in point is the swastika.

The broken cross symbol is an ancient one that signified positive things like health and good fortune. Its pattern can be found carved in ancient Hindu monuments, wrapped around the cornice of rooms in Masonic temples, and stitched into cloth and tapestries.

The unfortunate history of the swastika is that the National Socialists Party, aka The Nazis, adopted it for their logo and their ideologies forever making it a symbol of hatreds, torture and murder. No one can expect to use swastikas in their designs unless they are trying to embody that extreme negative imagery.

A second case is the design of the Confederate Battle Flag of the American South, aka Dixie. Although many Americans feel a kindred with it others feel only the dread. Sometime after its adoption as a national symbol it was likewise adopted by the Ku Klux Klan and brandished it as a symbol of terror, torture and murder.  Like for the swastika it is time to deprecate its use other than to signify the terror, torture and murder that it has come to be known for.

As an unfortunate parallel the Star of David and the Crucifix have similar mixed usage histories. In the former case, it has become synonymous with the oppression of Palestinians in Gaza and the mistreatment of those people by the State of Israel. In the latter case, the Crucifix as the hopeful symbol of Christ has also been carried into battle against Muslims armies in numerous Crusades throughout the centuries. It has been linked with the atrocities of the Inquisition. The main differences between it and the Confederate Battle Flag seems to be couched in the relative numbers of people who hold it as a positive symbol.

Prior to Christianity's claim to the symbol, the Romans employed the full sized versions of the cross to punish, torture and kill their enemies. In a land where the image is positive, it remains. In a land where it stands as a negative, it is banned. Therefore, in this land where more people see the "Stars and Bars" as a negative racist throwback to the 19th Century it will be banished from polite usage and varying measures of where it shall be allowed to remain shall be debated.

In private usage, where a relatively small number of people associate, the Battle Flag will surely remain for decades to come. But where it is displayed in public as a symbol for a State, a judiciary, or a legislature it cannot and will not prevail.