"There's no remaining honor in Roy Moore's Gadsden flag."

Readers may recall my Flag day speech about flags both false and true. As I said at that time:

We must answer that question at the end of history -- which country does the stars and stripes represent? For in the end it certainly cannot represent both. The Gadsden flag, with its threatening rattlesnake and bold warning "Don't tread on me" is perhaps more plainly honest, more unambiguous, than the stars and stripes. Freed of the burden of being the national colors which seem to be saddled with the necessity of being all things to all people, the Gadsden flag is plain in its declaration of free men and the rights to our own liberty and property and lives. Don't threaten me, it warns. Or, in the words of some of this generation -- "Don't start nothin', won't be nothin'." It is not as blunt as the Gonzales flag of Texas liberty with its image of a cannon and the challenge "Come and take it," but it is close enough, as they say, "for government work."

This is why the Gadsden flag is so popular at rallies of today's liberty movements -- from the Tea Party to the protesters of the Federal land grab at the Bundy Ranch and elsewhere in the west to Second Amendment activists of today -- the message is clear: There is a line, Mr. Government Bureaucrat, that you cross at your own deadly peril. "Don't tread on me." DON'T TREAD ON US! It is for this reason that the collectivists -- the domestic enemies of the Founders' Republic -- are made somewhat angered, if not deranged, by the Gadsden flag. Its sentiment is plain -- it cannot be polluted or corrupted or co-opted. They must therefore do their best to demonize it, to discredit it, to profane it, and to lie about those who fly it. We have seen that very clearly in their reaction to the Miller meth-head murderers' misuse of the Gadsden flag in their Nevada rampage. The flag is itself "anti-government" they proclaim and proof that the Millers represent the rest of us "anti-government types."

Now I don't know about you, but I'm not "anti-government," although the Southern Poverty Law Center has been calling me that for two decades now. I am in fact pro-government of the kind the Founders would recognize. I am pro small government, safe government -- a government of limited powers -- a government that supports the rule of law AND OPERATES WITHIN IT. When our enemies -- those domestic enemies of the Constitution that the Founders warned us about -- call us "anti-government" what they really mean is that we are anti-"do-it-our-way-or-we'll-kill-you" government. Of course they're right about that, but they cannot honestly admit it to others that they are trying to convince, so they call us "anti-government" and hope the lie sticks.

But flags are symbols. They are shorthand for who you are and what you represent. And what you love. So if they can discredit one symbol and co-opt another to their purposes they are more than halfway down the road to their victory of the collective over the individual.

The entire speech transcript may be found here. And in proof of my analysis back in June, we now have this.

However the Tea Party sees the symbol, the Gadsden flag has been adopted by private militias, the Sovereign movement, and radical and racist seditionist conspirators of all kinds. Killers have committed political murder under that symbol. The state's Tea Party might wish to taunt the oppressive federal government, and they should do so, as they have political points to make. But they cannot stand upright under the Gadsden flag.

I will have my own answer to this screed later.