There is, as I'm sure you know, a certain kind of conservative who likes to drive a colossal

pedestrian mashing truck with as many flags as possible flying from it.

And if you've seen one of these trucks before, and you definitely have, you may have noticed that among the many flags

are usually these two. Now, the first one there on the left is the thin blue line flag, which is

used to celebrate police officers and indicated opposition to Black Lives Matter.

The one on the right is the much older Gadsden flag today used primarily to indicate support for libertarianism and small government.

There's something rather amusing and ironic about seeing the two flags together.

One of these flags is a defense of the state agents who put their boot on people's necks,

while the other is about not letting the state put its boot on your neck.

Their messages seem diametrically opposed then. The police are the arm of government

empowered to use violence. There is no more coercive part of the government than the police.

So surely if the Gadsden Rattlesnake is hissing at anyone, it's hissing at the police.

But the seeming contradiction is no contradiction at all,

as we realize when we remember that the world is full of many different necks

on which the state can put its boot.

The Gadsden flag does not say,

Don't tread on anyone.

It says, don't tread on me. Take it literally, it does not announce a general

principle for how the government ought to treat people. It's a purely individual insistence

that the bearer of the flag themselves should not be coerced. Christopher Gadsden, the designer of the flag, led the American Patriot

movement in South Carolina during the Revolution, and was a delegate to the Continental Congress.

He also owned a great number of slaves and built a wharf through which a hundred thousand

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