Reply to "Don't tread on me" license plate

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[quote=Anonymous]I'm a retired Marine. And very liberal. I voted for Obama and Clinton. I recall seeing the Gadsen flag often when I joined the USMC (early 1990s). It was on t-shirts, jackets, bumper stickers, etc. White people, black people, Latinos, Asian Americans... all races wore it. It was a way to show pride in being a Marine. Some units used this as their local flag. It has a lot of historical significance to Marines.  I retired in 2012, and saw the "don't tread on me" symbol throughout my entire time in the USMC. It gained popularity after 9/11 as well.
Now, the Tea Party started using it. I don't associate Gadsen flag automatically with Tea Party, since for 2 decades before that I had known it as a military flag dating back to the American Revolution.
The Gadsen flag is very different than the swastika.  No one in the U.S. knew what the swastika was before the Nazis, save for a maybe a few Indian immigrants. Even then, it wasn't in current use in India.  The swastika was used in a regime that murdered millions of civilians. The swastika will always be associated with Nazis, no matter what it's ancient origins may be.
Nor is the Gadsen flag like the Confederate Flag, which was the official flag of the Confederacy, aka - keep black people enslaved. And then used by southern whites to intimidate blacks. The Confederate flag was born in the confederacy for the Confederacy.
The Gadsen flag... so some conservatives now cling to that flag. Some are racist. And some may have waved the flag at various right wing rallies.  But no regime has used that flag that has murdered or enslaved.
I'm sure somewhere in my house is a t-shirt or patch or something with the Gadsen flag. Something I would have gotten years ago before the Tea Party existed. 
Most veterans don't associate the Gadsen flag with Tea Party.  I don't.  [/quote]

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