1956: Georgia changes their flag to incorporate Confederate “rebel” flag.
2001: Gov. Roy Barnes gains adoption of new, more neutral flag, but subsequently loses reelection because of it.
2003: Yet another new flag is proposed and is now ready for adoption.
The CNN story indicates that “The new flag is modeled after the ‘Stars and Bars’ national flag used by the Confederacy,” but unfortunately their picture doesn’t really give you a good idea of what “based on” means.
The Calpundit Art Department is on the case, however, and you can see the result for yourself. I suppose you can make the case ? and the designers did ? that using the original Georgia flag is a decent compromise all around, but if that’s the case then why did they deliberately make changes to make it more similar to the Confederate flag than the original 1879 state flag ever was?
It’s true that the new flag doesn’t pack the emotional punch of the old battle flag motif ? and at least they had the decency to use 13 stars instead of 7 ? but still. When it comes to the Confederacy, Georgia Republicans sure do turn out to be surprisingly studious history buffs, don’t they? Go figure.
(Thanks to Tacitus for the idea.)
UPDATE: blogoSFERICS points out that on Friday the legislature finally approved a slightly different flag, apparently removing “In God We Trust” from the middle bar, and approved a referendum that doesn’t include the old 1956 flag as an option, thus gaining enough Democratic support to pass. The whole story is here.
