# Posted 10:24 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

WHY DOESN'T THE NORTH HAVE A FLAG? My brief post on this subject provoked lots of responses. As a number of readers pointed out, often with indignation, the North does have a flag, which is the Stars & Stripes.

Yes, I know that. Nor am I really serious about my proposal that the North or Northeast or Northwest should have a flag. I just find it amusing and anomalous that only one region of our country has such a flag. Surely in the name of equality we all should have a flag!

(Or is that too much of a welfare-state sentiment? Perhaps we should all just have an equal opportunity to design regional flags.)

On a related note, how come straight people don't have a flag? The LGBT community has that lovely rainbow banner, which conveniently confirms all of those stereortypes about gay men having better taste than the rest of us. So how about a straight flag? Or a metrosexual flag?

Now switching gears a bit from the hypothetical to the real, both BC and NH point out that there is already a notional republic of Cascadia (comprising Oregon, Washington and British Columbia) which has its own flag, seen below. Apparently, the citizens of Cascadia have secessionist ambitions, which confirms the unfortunate precdent set by the Confederate States of America, i.e. that you only get your own flag when you turn your back on the Union.

Frankly, I would hope that regional pride could be expressed in a manner more compatible with the Constitution.

On a moderately related note, I should observe that multiple Cascadians expressed their dissatisfaction with my proposal that the Northwestern flag should consist of a Starbucks logo on a field of green, when in fact true Northwesterners prefer independent coffee shops to corporate conglomerate.

I must admit, I am not persuaded by this point. I would argue that the Starbucks-on-green logo perfectly captures the non-conformist pretensions of Cascadian culture. Cascadian rhetoric may glorify the independent provider of caffeination, but when given the opportunity to transform that small business into a global coffee empire, certain Cascadian businessmen set about doing so with few reservations.

Perhaps they were just emulating the methods of that most famous of Cascadian entrepreneurs, Bill Gates... (0) opinions -- Add your opinion