Masha Gessen reported in The New Yorker today that a Russian judge had ordered the destruction of a Gadsden Flag seized from prominent Putin critic and video blogger (“vlogger”) Yegor Zhukov: In many of his vlog entries, Zhukov is seated against the backdrop of the Gadsden flag—“Don’t Tread on Me”—which appears to hang in his […]
The 76th edition of our newsletter features: Genesis of Good Flag, Bad Flag (Ted Kaye) A “Gray Pride” Flag (David Koski) The Pro-Abortion Gadsden Flag (Ted Kaye) Flaggy Map Flags in School (Michael Orelove) Farewell, Michael Faul & Chumley (Michael Faul) Pirate Flags in the Caribbean (Michael Orelove) The Red Flag (John Cartledge) And, as […]
The Gadsden Flag has been endlessly reinterpreted, modified, parodied, and generally played with, as the following examples show. The design violates a number of basic principles of good flag design, but its ability to capture the imagination and spur creativity shows it to have become a very effective flag nevertheless. Amplifications: Specific “rights”: Porcupines: Simplifications: Parodies: […]
Yesterday we asked: Who designed the Gadsden Flag? And just as we can’t be certain of the designer, neither do we know what the original flag actually looked like. Nevertheless, the flag marketplace, and cyberspace, has converged on, basically, a single design. (This suggests a common origin, but we couldn’t pin it down to an artist, enterprise, […]
The “Gadsden” of “Gadsden Flag” fame is Continental Colonel Christopher Gadsden of South Carolina (and not his grandson James Gadsden of Gadsden Purchase fame). In late 1775 the colonel was a member of the Marine Committee of the Second Continental Congress charged with outfitting the ships of the nascent Continental Navy. Part of that activity involved coming […]
