Vice presidential candidate Tim Walz (D-Minn.) may have done nothing while Minneapolis burned and fled when duty called for the Iraq War, but he never wavered when it came to fighting the woke battle to change the state's allegedly non-inclusive flag.
A Four-Star General Who Destroys History
Indeed, critics say Waltz may not have been the “master sergeant” he portrayed himself to be for political gain, but he was certainly a history-shattering four-star general.
“These are some of the most important things we can do to help our students,” PragerU Director Jill Simonian wrote in Fox News on Wednesday.
Earlier this year, Minnesota retired its historic state flag and replaced it with a new, more “inclusive” one. “Our (previous) flag is problematic,” said Tim Walz, vice presidential candidate and current Minnesota governor. He quickly assembled a 17-person committee to help remove images of farmers and Native Americans from the flag and replace it with an eight-pointed star, often associated with the Babylonian goddess Ishtar. About half of Minnesotans reportedly opposed the change, but they had little say in the matter. The committee reportedly changed the state flag without giving voters a chance to vote.
… I was outraged when I learned that a small number of individuals had changed our historic state flag without the consent of Minnesotans.
As an Armenian-American mother, I can't help but notice that Minnesota's newly adopted eight-pointed star looks just like the star that appeared on the flag of the Ottoman Empire in the late 1800s. This flag was used when the Muslim Ottoman Turks began their genocide against the Christian Armenians of the region. Another flag that sports this same eight-pointed star? Azerbaijan, whose military ethnically cleansed the indigenous Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh as recently as 2023.
Defenders of the new flag claim that its similarities to the flags of the Ottoman Empire and Somalia (the latter of which is also suspect) are merely coincidental, which may be true. But there is no doubt that the awakened public was outraged by the imagery of the traditional flag. Some say that the flag's depiction of a white farmer plowing the land, with an American Indian riding behind him, depicts the expulsion of the “native” people by the “European colonizers.” But is that really the case?
Traditional flag
Consider this WorldAtlas explanation of the meaning behind the traditional Minnesota state flag:
The design has a blue background with an image of the coat of arms in the center. The coat of arms is surrounded by white flags forming an outer circle with 19 stars arranged around the perimeter. These stars represent each state in the United States, with Minnesota being the 19th state admitted to the Union. At the top is the North Star and the largest star representing the state of Minnesota. The stars are symbols of the state's prominence.
The coat of arms depicts a man plowing and a Native American on horseback holding an axe and a gun. These depictions symbolize the state's rich agricultural potential, landscape, and Native American heritage. The background of the coat of arms depicts rivers representing the importance of the Mississippi and St. Anthony rivers to the state. The state tree is represented by three pine trees in the background. These trees symbolize the timber-rich areas of St. Croix and Lake Superior. The coat of arms is surrounded by pink lady flowers, the official state flower.
Additionally, there is no evidence that the flag's 19th century creator, Amelia Hyde Center, was a bigot, and there is speculation that her design may have been inspired by the flag of a Minnesota military regiment that fought for the Union during the Civil War. A short video on the history and development of the flag follows.
Below is a video introducing the new flag.
To be fair, and as I reported in February 2023, efforts to replace the traditional flag have been underway for years. One cited very mundane reasons (e.g., the old flag is too complicated). What could the problem be?
Part of the culture wars
Woke thought police like Walz and state Rep. Mike Freiberg, who introduced the flag-changing bill, offered politically correct reasons: Freiberg, for example, argued that the flag is racist and that it has “very clear connotations.”
Some say he and his allies have a very clear agenda. Simonian, for example, argues that the new flag represents the erasure of history, particularly Indian culture. She also cites Donna Bergstrom, an Indian Minnesotan, who calls the change an “attack” on her heritage.
But this attack goes beyond that. Leftists often fight to remove long-standing Native American symbols and imagery, such as renaming Mount McKinley “Denali.” Enemies of the status quo and promoters of Year Zero, they are always looking to replace “what is” with, in many cases, “what shouldn't be” (that is, until they control the “status quo”).
So what's really happening is a cultural revolution, something Simonian calls a kind of “coup.” This is the real reason to oppose efforts like changing Minnesota's flag: These aren't isolated incidents; they're fronts in a culture war. Statues are being toppled, buildings are being renamed, words are being redefined, traditions are being overturned, cultures are being turned upside down, and morality is being erased.
So, like any war, this is not a matter of a little piece of territory that one enemy battalion wants at the moment, which you can't give up and appease, but a matter of the enemy continually asserting territory piece by piece, with a thousand and one victories.
Ultimately, we may wake up one day and realize that before we can make America great again, we must make America America again. We can win the battle or lose the war.
