Signs of Trouble

Washington joins a list of progressive-leaning states looking to unmoor from their history

– Olympia, WA

It was only 13 months ago that members of the Minnesota state congress voted to completely overhaul their state flag.

Rumblings have spread in other bastions of leftist thought to look at doing the same. One of those strongholds is Washington state, where house lawmakers in Olympia have put wheels in motion to ultimately vote on a new design of the state flag.

The vote taking place later in this congressional session will be merely to commission a group to come up with a new design to be put forward as a replacement. Even though a final vote will not take place this year, Washington’s state legislators seem intent that change will be in the air.

A Cautionary Tale: The North Star State

A groundswell of activism, a sudden vote in the state legislature, and by May of 2024, Minnesota’s flag became unrecognizable to Minnesotan and common US citizens alike. Gone was the previous design first adopted in 1893 and then amended in 1957, that displayed a pastoral scene of a farmer working his land amongst trees and a running river with an American Indian riding a horse in the background, all encompassed by a blue border.

In its place, as voted by the legislature in December 2023, was a flag with a dark blue field (roughly the shape of the state) on the left with a lighter blue section making up roughly the right two-thirds of the flag. Within the center of that left-ward section of the flag is an eight-point star, an homage to the North Star, proponents of the design said.

But what was also said, by the artist who designed the flag, tells the true story of how identity politics and PC culture has framed the discussion around not only redesigning flags, but many of our nation’s monuments, insignia and history.

“Dare I say anything that’s not a Native person being forced off their land is a flag upgrade?!” tweeted Democratic Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, a member of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe. “Excited to have a new state flag that represents every Minnesotan.”

That sentiment was rampant during the transition from the old design. That somehow the picture was not only excluding of many Minnesotans, but overtly offensive to the Indian population. This was even after the design was amended in the 80’s to change the Indian’s direction as going toward the settler instead of away from him. One can never appease the race-baiters enough.

What they ended up with, was something that proponents say does represent all Minnesotans. But by that they mean it equally represents no Minnesotans. The solid colors, the white star, the utter lack of depth or history, is the kind of sterilized design that comforts the swath of the country offended by everything.

One added wrinkle to the new flag is the staggering resemblance to Somalia’s national flag. A detail made even more intriguing by the fact that Minnesota happens to house America’s largest Somali immigrant population. It must just be a coincidence. Let the reader decide.

What is a flag?

As Washington moves forward with its committee to draft a new flag design – seeking to update a state insignia that has remained in place for over 100 years – it begs the question, why fight it? What purpose could a design that predates World War 1 have for a modern Washington?

That question, though, touches on the primary divide when it comes to historical icons, insignia and imagery. It’s the same divide that causes mobs to tear down statues of Christopher Columbus, Robert E. Lee, and Thomas Jefferson. It’s what propels activists to erect busts of George Floyd in their place.

Is a flag a depiction of identity and representation? Or is it rooted in something further back, telling the story of our land and our people as God’s hand has directed it?

For the progressive left – seated in an ideology of perpetual revolution and change, and seeking to detach itself from the past wherever possible – the answer is the former. Much of the debate that swirled around Minnesota’s transition to a new design centered on accusations of lack of inclusivity and overt racism.

Rather than seeing the Indian on horseback riding in the background as acknowledgment of the historical fibers of the tribal cultures that inhabited Minnesota before American settlers came, critics first attacked the direction he was heading – away from the settler – as a deceptive idea that Indians left Minnesota land peacefully. Then, once the direction was reversed, the attacks flooded in that the depiction was too erect, too proud, and not indicative of his oppressed state.

Hating their own heritage, and the blessing of liberty that allowed men and women of America to settle those fertile lands and till it for the glory of God, they smeared the design as out of touch and bigotry in every sense.

And because regular Minnesotans said nothing, that is the narrative that won out, and what is left is a nationalistically ambiguous, bland, and “modern art” kind of flag that says virtually nothing of the state’s history or people.

Which Way Washington?

The voices clamoring for a new flag in Washington state are echoing those that tore down Minnesota’s state flag. The simple design showing the state insignia of George Washington’s bust has been the representation of the state since 1914, when the design was first submitted by the Daughters of the American Revolution.

But detractors have gnashed their teeth for years now that this is a non-inclusive picture and does not represent the people of Washington. Given the recent attacks leveled at America’s founding father, for his inherent racism and slaveholding, this should hardly surprise anyone.

But Washington state holds the distinction of being the only state named after an American president, and proponents of the flag want its ensign to continue to depict that. His legacy as America’s first president and the greatest hero of our nation, is much entwined with the state that bears his name. His influence and leadership that helped forge a new country should be evident, then, in the culture and insignia that state has produced.

Much of the rhetoric against House Bill 1938 that would green-light a committee to design a new flag has been poor timing and unnecessary cost for a state in a $12 billion budget shortfall. But the messaging will need to change to keep the progressive ideations at bay. Unlike their neighbors to the east, Washingtonians need to remember and respect their history, and recall the gifts of God that formed this state in the first place.