Minnesota’s absurdly left-wing government has undertaken to design a new state flag and Great Seal. Why? Currently, the state flag is just the seal against a background. This is the seal. It shows a farmer and an Indian with a background suitable to Minnesota, including a pine forest and a waterfall which is St. Anthony Falls in Minneapolis:
The current seal includes Minnesota’s motto–“L’Etoile du Nord,” Star of the North–and the date when Minnesota became a state, 1858. Just in time for the Civil War, in which Minnesotans fought famously and heroically.
So how are the redesigns coming along? There are three finalists for the state flag, which will no longer replicate the Great Seal. Frankly, they aren’t worth talking about. They are all brightly colored abstract designs that would be suitable as corporate logos. Why any of them should represent Minnesota on the state’s flag is anyone’s guess.
The Great Seal has been more controversial. The committee, dominated by left-wing activists, came up with a design that was a step down, but not horrible:
The settler is gone, as is the Indian–somewhat ironically, since the committee consists in large part of Native American activists. Let’s pause on that for a moment: this is what Minnesota statute 1.135 says about the Indian on the existing seal:
The Indian on horseback is riding due south and represents the great Indian heritage of Minnesota. The Indian’s horse and spear and the Pioneer’s ax, rifle, and plow represent tools that were used for hunting and labor.
Today’s Indian activists are doing away with that.
But that isn’t all. Left-wing activists demanded changes in the loon-dominated original version of the seal. Specifically, they voted to replace the state’s motto, “L’Etoile du Nord,” with a Dakota phrase that is not the state’s motto, “Mni Sota Makoce,” which virtually no one can translate. And they voted to remove the date of statehood, 1858, from the Great Seal:
[C]ommission member Kate Beane…told her colleagues the year 1858, which marks Minnesota’s entry in the union of states, “is not a date we are celebrating; it’s not something to honor.”
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“It’s a traumatic date for [Dakota people] to be looking at,” Beane said, who added that the charge of the commission is to look at “how to make these emblems more inclusive and representative of who we are as a state. Including the 1858 [on the seal] does the opposite of that.”
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But Beane countered that Minnesota’s statehood is “not joyous. It’s a reality, it’s something we [as Dakota people] have learned how to navigate.”
But Minnesota is a state. We are talking here about the Great Seal of the State of Minnesota. If you think that the United States of America is a calamity, and the year in which Minnesota joined the union should not be commemorated because it is “not joyous” for an ethnic group that comprises 1.1% of the state’s population, fine. But why in the world are you dictating the design of the state’s Great Seal?
You may think that this is an insane tale from a state gone wrong, but the same vicious anti-American impulse that animates leftists in Minnesota exists across the country, and increasingly dominates national, state and local governments.
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