Most National Flags Symbolize Both Good & Evil.

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But one in particular is pretty much taboo around the world except in the hands private citizens in the US. The other, The Confederate Flag, is quickly following in the first flag's footsteps, becoming taboo except in the hands of private US citizens.

Thinking about it, most national flags do symbolize rotten policy as well as good so why do we choose to ostracize only two in a sea of many?

The Union Jack, for example, has a terrible history throughout the world. It even attempted to inflict misery on this country, when it was still under its rulership yet no one anywhere bans this flag. The American stars and stripes, another example. Spain brought small pox to the Maya and Aztecs, killed millions. On their conquest they took land at will leaving behind a brigade of destructive, nuisance boars.

France was a country that tolerated the worst treatment for creole slaves as well as going abroad and taking land and that's not even taking into account Napoleon's crimes against Europe.

I almost left out one of the most notoriously evil flags of all time, the one flown by the Soviet Union but it was replaced with a friendlier flag in 1993.

The 'Jack has and is burned on occasion. It isn't a crime, as long as it is your copy of the Jack, and we don't swear allegiance to it. If you burn it we just shrug and not get worked up about it.

I think the difference is that Britain has moved on from the age of empire to one of the common wealth. British values are about tolerance of race etc. The Jack is also an amalgamation of three national flags (England, N Ireland and Scotland) who are a union of nations. If Scotland were to leave the union then the Jack would have to be redrawn! Meanwhile some Welsh would like their dragon added.

Most English hate the Cross of St George being associated with the National Front or racism. It is an association that is resisted.

It seems that those who use the Confederate flag are looking back with a degree of nostalgia. It was used as an emblem for those who resisted civil rights. Therefore those who eventually had their civil rights recognised belatedly might well feel it does not represent them or their state. Can you say that the values associated with the Confederate flag are clearly no longer of racism and slavery? More importantly, can everyone be convinced that is the case?

A flag is an emblem that all its people should identify if it is to work.

Symbols mean different things to different people, difficult as that is for some people to grasp.

Much like the peace sign called the swastika.

The American flag itself is not evil and neither is the confederate flag.
I'm evil so I would know these things.

Flags don't really symbolize anything at all. People are the ones who put a symbol to them.

Governments are both good and evil... mostly evil.

I'm from Finland, a country with 1,000 miles of common border with the former Soviet Union, today's Russia. We were once at war against them and we lost because their army was simply too big for our modest troops. Germany tried to help us (no other country did), but in the end, the Nazi regime collapsed. Us having been their ally, the Soviet Union tried every imaginable way to turn our post-war life into nightmare. We had to vote in the UN as they dictated, we had to pay every cent of our war debts to them. So, the first ten years after WW II, we had reasons to hate the Soviet flag.

Gradually things changed. The world faced a new kind of problematic situation, the nuclear fear and the cold war, almost slipped into WW III with the Cuban missile crisis. Among all this, the Soviet government realized it would be a good idea to have friendly relationships with a country whose people love the same music as they do, whose railroads have the same gauge as theirs, who go to sauna like they do, who eat dark bread like they do. Our decades-long bilateral trade with them literally saved Finland from becoming another insignificant East European corner.

From our point of you, starting around the 1960s, the world was a better place when the Soviet flag was flown. Uncertainty began with the demise of CCCP.

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