Founders' flags are all offensive now (05-23-2024--Hour1)

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[00:00:29] Did you know that there is a flag that is white with a tree on it?

[00:00:37] And this is apparently the flag of the stop the steel movement or group.

[00:00:46] Is it a movement?

[00:00:48] No, I was not aware yet again, another flag that I was not aware of its importance and

[00:00:55] its meaning.

[00:00:56] But thank goodness, the New York Times sent four reporters to go track down this story

[00:01:04] of the appeal to heaven flag.

[00:01:10] That's what it's called appeal to heaven flag.

[00:01:12] And as I said, it is a, it's a white background and then there's a tree and the tree is green.

[00:01:19] It's like a pine tree looking tree.

[00:01:21] It's like green at the top and then a brown trunk.

[00:01:26] And then it says appeal to heaven underneath.

[00:01:30] That's that's the flag.

[00:01:33] Apparently it's where do I see?

[00:01:34] It's the maritime flag of Massachusetts, which makes total sense, obviously.

[00:01:42] No, the New York Times was very interested in this flag because it was seen flying from

[00:01:50] a flagpole at a house owned by Justice Samuel Alito.

[00:01:57] This is a different house.

[00:01:59] He apparently has two houses.

[00:02:02] He's got one.

[00:02:03] He and his wife have a house in the Virginia area, obviously near where the Supreme Court,

[00:02:07] you know, operates out of.

[00:02:10] And then he's got another one in, I believe, New Jersey.

[00:02:14] Why?

[00:02:15] I don't know.

[00:02:16] I don't know why anybody would have a house in Jersey, but he's got a house somewhere in

[00:02:21] New Jersey and maybe that's where he's originally from.

[00:02:25] I don't know.

[00:02:26] Look, we all have our cross to bear.

[00:02:27] Do you want to hear my New Jersey joke, by the way?

[00:02:30] All right, I'll tell you.

[00:02:33] Why do it's going to sound like it's not a New Jersey joke for at first, but it will

[00:02:37] it will be OK.

[00:02:38] Why do New Yorkers have such bad attitudes?

[00:02:41] Oh, I don't know why.

[00:02:44] There you go.

[00:02:45] OK.

[00:02:46] The answer is yes.

[00:02:47] The light at the end of the tunnel is New Jersey.

[00:02:49] Thank you.

[00:02:51] Thank you.

[00:02:53] Tip your waiters.

[00:02:55] The downside on that is that you can actually use that joke against New Yorkers as well.

[00:03:00] But I don't know if New Jerseyites, New Jersey Owens, New Jersey, New Jerseyans, I don't

[00:03:07] know if they've got a reputation for the bad attitude like the New Yorkers have.

[00:03:10] So it kind of works better.

[00:03:12] And the tunnel is the Lincoln Tunnel.

[00:03:14] So you go through the tunnel and you leave New York, go to Jersey.

[00:03:17] That's the light at the end.

[00:03:18] OK, if you have to explain the joke, it's not funny.

[00:03:20] All right.

[00:03:21] OK.

[00:03:22] So Josh Blackman writing at Reason Dotcom, Libertarian website magazine as well.

[00:03:29] He said, I have learned a few things this past week about the Alitos.

[00:03:32] It seems that they have flagpoles at their homes and they use flags to convey messages.

[00:03:39] Are you aware, by the way, that you could purchase a long pole of various material and

[00:03:49] you can stick it into the ground and then you could run a flag up that pole?

[00:03:54] And then that and then depending on what the flag is, you could communicate a message to

[00:03:58] people who see the flag.

[00:04:00] Did you know this?

[00:04:01] Apparently, it's a trend.

[00:04:04] It's a new trend.

[00:04:05] So at the Alito home in Virginia, you'll recall Mrs. Alito.

[00:04:10] We did this story the other day.

[00:04:12] She flew the flag, the American flag upside down as part of a neighborly spat is what

[00:04:19] he calls it.

[00:04:20] I don't think it's neighborly.

[00:04:21] It was not very neighborly at all the way this individual acted towards the Alitos.

[00:04:25] And that's why she flew the flag upside down.

[00:04:28] And historically, that sends a message of distress that you are in distress.

[00:04:33] And when your neighbor is putting up yard signs, attacking you and calling you awful

[00:04:40] vulgar names and that neighbor's property is in front of a little kid's bus stop.

[00:04:46] I could see why as the wife of a sitting member of the Supreme Court would feel somewhat constrained

[00:04:53] in how she could react because if it's, you know, it's just some random person, not a

[00:04:57] Supreme Court justice.

[00:04:59] I suspect there may have been a different course of action she could have taken and

[00:05:04] Sam Alito could have taken as well.

[00:05:07] Now I don't know what their level of, you know, martial artistry is.

[00:05:13] I don't know how old the other neighbor is.

[00:05:15] I don't know who could take who.

[00:05:16] But you know, you call my wife some of the words that that this neighbor called Alito's

[00:05:23] wife and there'd be a visit.

[00:05:26] So she runs the flag up.

[00:05:28] But of course, the New York Times kind of proving the point does the story about, oh

[00:05:33] my girl, she's got the flag upside down.

[00:05:36] And that's the that's the J6 flag, which not the J6 flag.

[00:05:40] It's actually just it's a long standing thing.

[00:05:43] You run the flag upside down if you're like in a sinking boat and you're in distress or

[00:05:46] something like that.

[00:05:47] OK, so that was the first story.

[00:05:49] That was the first story.

[00:05:50] Now, as Dan McLaughlin writing at National Review says, having shot and missed in an

[00:05:56] effort to blame Justice Sam Alito for a flag that his wife flew briefly in mid-January.

[00:06:02] You might think that Jodi Kantor, Eric Toller, Julie Tate and Alan Feuer of the New York

[00:06:10] Times would do one of two things.

[00:06:11] Either do some additional reporting to fix the gaping holes in that story, right?

[00:06:17] Assuming that they are fixable.

[00:06:18] And that's a very generous assumption.

[00:06:21] Or just move on, just move on quietly, pretended you didn't write the story.

[00:06:26] Just well, we took our shot.

[00:06:27] Didn't work very well.

[00:06:29] But that's not how activist agitprop campaigns work.

[00:06:34] Is there a party in the hallway?

[00:06:36] Sorry.

[00:06:37] Is there a party out there?

[00:06:41] Are they doing something for a social?

[00:06:45] OK, so.

[00:06:48] All right, so back to this piece, National Review, Dan McLaughlin.

[00:06:52] But that's not how activist agitprop campaigns work.

[00:06:55] Instead, the next logical step is to throw out an even flimsier story that looks sort

[00:07:00] of vaguely similar from a distance and hope that the narrative outruns the actual facts.

[00:07:05] This is what passes for political journalism these days.

[00:07:08] This is why I call it journalisming.

[00:07:10] This is not really journalism.

[00:07:13] It looks kind of like journalism.

[00:07:15] But like he says, if you kind of if you look at it from a distance and kind of squint like,

[00:07:20] oh, I think that's journalism.

[00:07:21] No, is journalisming is different.

[00:07:25] Similar but not really.

[00:07:27] Headline, another provocative flag was flown at another Alito home.

[00:07:34] And it took four reporters, by the way, to do this story for reporters to track down

[00:07:40] a flag on a pole.

[00:07:42] They are elusive.

[00:07:43] The elusive flags on poles.

[00:07:47] I've heard many, many a tale of the elusive flag on a pole.

[00:07:52] The pine tree flag, that's what it's called, which features a pine tree against a white

[00:07:56] backdrop over the phrase an appeal to heaven.

[00:08:00] It is associated with that notorious insurrectionist or as Joe Biden would call him, erectionist.

[00:08:10] George Washington.

[00:08:11] This is, according to the New York Times, yes, this is a provocative symbol.

[00:08:25] Mostly to diehard British royalists.

[00:08:27] But that flag was designed in 1775 by Colonel Joseph Reed, who was George Washington's personal

[00:08:34] secretary at the time and was specifically commissioned by George himself.

[00:08:41] By George.

[00:08:42] It evoked a New Hampshire riot against British tree regulations.

[00:08:50] That's the reason for the tree on the flag.

[00:08:52] It was a protest, I mean, which I guess makes sense back in the day.

[00:08:56] Like how do you convey that you're against a piece of legislation?

[00:09:00] You know?

[00:09:01] Well, let's make a flag, guys.

[00:09:04] Let's make a flag.

[00:09:05] So they make a flag, a white flag with a pine tree on it and it remains the official maritime

[00:09:11] flag of Taxachusetts, although it does not have the slogan.

[00:09:17] It doesn't have the slogan, which is an appeal to heaven.

[00:09:21] The slogan came from the 17th century philosopher John Locke, who wrote about a responsibility

[00:09:28] to rebel and to, yes, even use violence to overthrow unjust rule.

[00:09:34] John Locke, another subversive man.

[00:09:39] Like I wonder, are any of the founding fathers not covered with the stench of insurrection?

[00:09:46] OK, if you're listening to this podcast, you are obviously paying attention to the

[00:09:51] world around us.

[00:09:52] You also have really great taste, I might add.

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[00:10:40] Alrighty, so the flag slogan on the pine tree flag comes from John Locke, who wrote about

[00:10:47] the responsibility to rebel, to overthrow unjust rule.

[00:10:51] The New York Times tells us that Sam Alito himself is a quote, vocal defender of religious

[00:10:58] liberty and an opponent of the right to abortion and same sex marriage.

[00:11:06] So a vocal defender of religious liberty.

[00:11:08] Well, we certainly can't have our Supreme Court stocked with defenders of liberties,

[00:11:12] especially liberties that are enshrined in the Bill of Rights.

[00:11:15] My God, what are we doing here, people?

[00:11:19] What's next?

[00:11:20] A defender of free speech on the Supreme Court?

[00:11:24] Going over this ridiculous story that the New York Times has done, they put four reporters

[00:11:28] on this to go track down a flagpole, which is very elusive as I understand it, at the

[00:11:34] Jersey Shore home of Samuel Alito.

[00:11:37] Apparently, yeah, hanging out with the situation and J-Wow, Paulie, Sammy.

[00:11:44] But anyway, he's got a house out there and they've got a flagpole and apparently they

[00:11:49] flew a flag up there that's called the Pine Tree Flag and it's got this slogan at the

[00:11:54] bottom, Appeal to Heaven.

[00:11:56] And it literally comes from George Washington.

[00:12:00] Okay, no, we did not chop that tree down.

[00:12:03] That's not what that's about.

[00:12:04] But it comes from Washington.

[00:12:06] He had it commissioned and it was in response to some British tree regulations.

[00:12:12] Could you imagine if the founders saw the level of governance in our society?

[00:12:18] I remember watching the documentary Sleepy Hollow, where they brought Ichabod Crane back

[00:12:25] from the dead and they stopped through a McDonald's drive-thru and he was outraged at the sales

[00:12:32] tax on the receipt.

[00:12:33] He's like, we overthrew a government for a 1% tie or tax rather.

[00:12:41] And this is like 12%.

[00:12:46] Anyway, much of the New York Times articles focus on whether Alito should recuse from

[00:12:52] any Trump-related case because they're trying to make these connections with the flag and

[00:12:57] the J6 stuff and the Trumpers and all of it.

[00:13:01] But as Josh Blackman writes at Reason.com, he says, I'm surprised they missed the more

[00:13:05] obvious angle, which is that if Alito is trying to endorse some kind of Christian nationalism,

[00:13:10] why shouldn't he recuse in all free exercise and establishment clause cases?

[00:13:17] Why limit the recusal attacks to the election cases?

[00:13:20] If you want to go down this road too, there's plenty of other evidence you could use, as

[00:13:24] I understand it.

[00:13:26] Justice Alito has publicly, publicly attended mass.

[00:13:31] For real.

[00:13:32] He has gone to church, people.

[00:13:35] He's given speeches where he laments how religious liberty has come under siege.

[00:13:41] You don't have to go and decipher what the flag means that's flying outside of his house

[00:13:47] for a few weeks or something.

[00:13:49] He's literally in the pews.

[00:13:52] You get pictures of that, man.

[00:13:56] Now keep in mind, this is a specific standard for Alito and the conservative justices.

[00:14:04] After all, the sainted Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the notorious RBG, she back in 2013, she presided

[00:14:15] over a same-sex wedding.

[00:14:18] And then a couple months later, they agreed, she ruled with the court to grant cert to

[00:14:25] hear, in other words, the gay marriage case of Bergerfeld v. Hodges.

[00:14:32] And then the next year, she joined a majority opinion that found the constitutional right

[00:14:38] that love is love.

[00:14:40] It's right there in the constitution that George Washington himself wrote after he got

[00:14:45] done making that flag.

[00:14:49] The Times article observed that today the Alitos flagpole to heaven was bare.

[00:14:53] That's what he's calling it, the flagpole to heaven.

[00:14:58] And all that glitters is not gold.

[00:15:01] Maybe they can still whisper their thoughts in the recesses of their homes, he says.

[00:15:05] The Alitos, right?

[00:15:07] So when Ginsburg takes very public positions and literally participates in a gay marriage

[00:15:12] wedding and then hears a case about it and rules in favor of gay marriage, totally fine.

[00:15:19] But Sam Alito flies a flag that 99% of Americans would not have any idea.

[00:15:26] Most of them would probably think, oh, is he like a Stanford fan?

[00:15:30] Because isn't that their mascot, the Stanford tree, right?

[00:15:36] Isn't that their mascot?

[00:15:37] I know you're probably thinking, how does Pete know so much about all of these different

[00:15:45] things?

[00:15:46] I got a tweet here from Steve.

[00:15:48] It's a Pete tweet.

[00:15:49] Pete, what is the bumper music from today's program aired at 1230?

[00:15:55] What did we just come in?

[00:15:56] Oh, my, dressed in green.

[00:16:02] Was that Riptide?

[00:16:03] Yes, Riptide by Vance Joy.

[00:16:06] Vance Joy.

[00:16:07] Vance Joy!

[00:16:08] That's Riptide.

[00:16:09] A great TV show, by the way, also.

[00:16:12] Ah, fun piece of calendar family trivia.

[00:16:20] I have a nephew who really, really hates that song.

[00:16:23] Okay, like to the point where if you just sing it, it's like gets in his head, earworm

[00:16:27] kind of thing.

[00:16:28] He just really hates it.

[00:16:29] And he's at the very young age where it's hilarious to torment them still, you know?

[00:16:35] No, I kid.

[00:16:38] I kid.

[00:16:39] But not about that.

[00:16:40] He really doesn't like the song.

[00:16:43] Dan McLaughlin at National Review, he says, of course, it is true that the pine tree flag

[00:16:52] is associated today with conservatives, just as it is true that virtually all founding

[00:16:57] father era patriotic iconography, including the Constitution itself, is associated with

[00:17:04] conservatism.

[00:17:07] But that is not the fault of conservatives.

[00:17:10] That is a symptom of the political left having abandoned the American founding and its philosophy.

[00:17:18] Correct!

[00:17:19] Right?

[00:17:20] Correct.

[00:17:21] Oh, sorry.

[00:17:22] I didn't mean to.

[00:17:23] I only gave one ding.

[00:17:25] That was not the cue.

[00:17:30] The left has abandoned these banners and standards and they've abandoned this stuff about the

[00:17:38] founding of the country.

[00:17:41] And so it's now to the point where if they see people displaying in a patriotic fashion,

[00:17:47] right, in a symbolic way, these symbols and some being symbolic, like you displayed the

[00:17:54] symbols that that automatically in their heads must mean that, oh my gosh, you're a knuckle

[00:17:59] dragging conservative Trump or whatever, because they've rejected it.

[00:18:06] We are not wrong for displaying these icons.

[00:18:10] You are wrong for rejecting them.

[00:18:13] I just saw this on a tweet regarding the offensive founder flags.

[00:18:19] Recall the this is from who is this?

[00:18:23] Western Lensman is his Twitter account.

[00:18:28] He's a creator, video producer and an anti-communist.

[00:18:33] And he pointed out that it was only a couple of years ago when Nike, remember, took their

[00:18:40] shoes off the market.

[00:18:42] Well, one iteration of the shoe that had the Betsy Ross symbols on it.

[00:18:51] Remember that?

[00:18:52] The Betsy Ross flag over concerns about the racist symbolism.

[00:18:57] Remember all of that?

[00:18:59] I remember when Madison Cawthorn, former congressman from Western North Carolina, he did an interview

[00:19:10] with some cable outlet or something, and he's sitting in his house and they got it

[00:19:16] set up.

[00:19:17] And behind him, he's got a Betsy Ross flag.

[00:19:21] And if I remember correctly, it was made out of metal.

[00:19:25] But it was the Betsy Ross flag.

[00:19:28] Outrage ensues.

[00:19:30] This is the symbol of white supremacists and all this.

[00:19:33] So that was so the Betsy Ross flag.

[00:19:35] Now we got the Pine Tree flag, which like 99% of people didn't even know was a flag

[00:19:41] from our founding era.

[00:19:44] The upside down American flag.

[00:19:46] Or how about the OG offensive flag?

[00:19:48] You know what that one was?

[00:19:50] Think back.

[00:19:53] It's yellow.

[00:19:55] Uh-huh.

[00:19:56] Yeah, there you go.

[00:19:58] It came to you.

[00:19:59] The Gadsden flag.

[00:20:00] Don't tread on me.

[00:20:01] Got to go all the way back to 2010 when that flag became a symbol of the Tea Party movement.

[00:20:09] And all of a sudden, that became a racist flag.

[00:20:12] Even though the Tea Party movement was about what?

[00:20:15] Stop spending.

[00:20:17] That's where it launched.

[00:20:19] Right from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

[00:20:22] Rick Santelli screaming on CNBC, stop spending, stop spending.

[00:20:29] Because the Congress had gone nuts during the recession and started spending all this money

[00:20:33] to bail out everybody.

[00:20:36] And then it was all coming due.

[00:20:38] Yeah, there's a long line here.

[00:20:41] Russ has a tweet here to me.

[00:20:43] He says, conservatives ceded the schools, so abandoned or surrendered the schools and

[00:20:50] most of the culture.

[00:20:52] Leftists ceded the founding and every other non-negative part of our history.

[00:20:57] Now those things are automatically associated because the other side left.

[00:21:01] Yeah.

[00:21:03] Well, and that's, see, and this, I'm going to get into the, some education topics here

[00:21:09] in the next couple hours because the vouchers are up again for debate and all of this.

[00:21:16] And there's a story that was done about Texas and the school choice issue that's created

[00:21:20] a civil war, if you will, inside the Republican Party.

[00:21:24] Because remember, the Democrat Party never has a civil war inside its organization.

[00:21:31] But this is the key.

[00:21:32] It's about control, right?

[00:21:35] The left has won the institutions of K-12 and the university.

[00:21:41] And they do not want to give up the ability to control the curricula for future generations.

[00:21:49] And so having the ability to opt out weakens their hold.

[00:21:54] It weakens their ability to control the future generations with their political preferences,

[00:22:01] their ideological preferences.

[00:22:03] When more parents check out of these systems, they lose their power.

[00:22:08] And the thing about leftism, it is always the same.

[00:22:11] I've tried to highlight these examples wherever I see them.

[00:22:15] Most recently we saw it with the United Methodist Church, right?

[00:22:21] Instead of trying to change a church and its principles to what you want that church to

[00:22:27] be, why don't you go start your own church?

[00:22:29] It's very easy to do.

[00:22:31] I see them popping up all the time.

[00:22:33] You get some space in a school, you can have some meetings and that sort of stuff, have

[00:22:37] some services.

[00:22:39] There are so many different denominations and religious orders that you can go find

[00:22:46] one that suits your style and aligns with your beliefs.

[00:22:51] But that's not the point.

[00:22:53] The point is always with Marxists, with destabilizers.

[00:22:57] The point is always to take over your institution, to change the rules of your institution, to

[00:23:05] basically gut it from the inside and then parade around wearing it as a skin because

[00:23:12] your institution was built over a very long period of time with blood, sweat, tears, and

[00:23:17] money.

[00:23:19] And because of all of that effort, that institution now has cachet, right?

[00:23:26] It has a certain reputation, it has gravitas, it has people understand what it's about,

[00:23:33] people think good things about it, sort of a halo effect in a marketing term.

[00:23:38] So rather than have to do all of that hard work, we're just going to go in and take over

[00:23:41] yours and we're going to gut it and now it's going to be ours.

[00:23:45] And we're going to change what it is.

[00:23:49] The UMC is just the latest example of it.

[00:23:55] Here's another story.

[00:23:57] The RNC, Republican National Committee, and the NC North Carolina Republican Party, and

[00:24:03] the NRCC, the National Republican Congressional Committee, they are all filing a request for

[00:24:08] a declaratory ruling with the North Carolina State Board of Elections related to absentee

[00:24:13] ballot guidance and voter ID rules adopted by the State Board of Elections that Republicans

[00:24:18] say are in conflict with state law.

[00:24:20] The parties are asking the Board of Elections to issue altered guidance to be in line with

[00:24:25] the relevant statutes because earlier this year, the Board of Elections passed rules

[00:24:29] regarding voter ID and then it issued revised rules interpreting various laws differently.

[00:24:36] And according to Republicans, those rules are not consistent with current state law about

[00:24:40] how to handle absentee ballots.

[00:24:43] Republicans say the guidance issued by the Board of Elections runs afoul of state law

[00:24:47] when it advises county boards that absentee ballots don't need to be properly returned

[00:24:55] in quote container return envelopes, which are sealed.

[00:25:00] They're also challenging the loose administration of voter ID laws, calling into question what

[00:25:05] they perceive as sort of an anything goes process that undermines the spirit of the

[00:25:10] law.

[00:25:11] Right?

[00:25:12] This is this is standard operating procedure with our Board of Elections in this state.

[00:25:16] All right, that'll do it for this episode.

[00:25:18] Thank you so much for listening.

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[00:25:23] on the podcast.

[00:25:24] So if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here.

[00:25:27] You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to theptcalendarshow.com.

[00:25:32] Again, thank you so much for listening and don't break anything while I'm gone.