For Massachusetts, it’s a Cracker Barrel second.
Does the state swap its historic seal and flag for a bland substitute — and succumb to progressive stress — or does it follow its historic roots?
Cracker Barrel tried it, and it didn’t work. Their authentic, folksy brand featured farmer “Uncle Herschel,” however the re-design went for smooth, trendy and Herschel-less. Backlash soared, gross sales tanked.
Nonetheless, that’s the query at hand as a particular panel, loftily referred to as the Massachusetts Seal, Flag and Motto Advisory Fee, final week got here up with a number of proposed milquetoast designs for a brand new state flag and seal, together with a brand new state motto.
The fee was created in 2021 to give you a brand new state seal following the nationwide outrage over the killing of George Floyd in 2020. That was when rioters trashed and toppled Accomplice statues and different symbols deemed racist and discriminatory.
The hysteria led to progressives demanding that the Massachusetts “racist” state seal get replaced.
The seal consists of a Native American holding a bow in a single hand and an arrow within the different. Above him is an arm holding a sword.
Draped across the picture is the Latin motto that interprets into the stirring, “By the sword we search peace, however peace below liberty.”
The seal has been used on all state paperwork and on the state flag that flies over the State Home and different state buildings for 100 years.
The fee would change the motto with, “Many voices, One Commonwealth,” which isn’t precisely designed to stir younger males to take up arms in opposition to the British once more.
If that doesn’t get a patriot’s blood boiling the fee beneficial different mottos like, ”We rejoice within the public good,” which appears like a slogan for welfare, and the heart-pumping “We honor all life guided by the First Mild” that may be posted above the doorway of a nursing dwelling.
These pithy mottos are accompanied by three state seal suggestions that look as if that they had been composed throughout kindergarten simply earlier than nap time.
You will need to perceive that the fee has been going after this variation, in a single type or one other, for 4 years and at a price of a few hundred thousand {dollars}.
It solicited submissions from the general public and after learning them, launched the 9 choices it launched final week — three for the seal, three for the flag and three for the motto.
The fee will now maintain a collection of public hearings earlier than deciding on a closing design for a brand new seal, new flag and new motto. The suggestions would then go to the governor who would file laws to make the change occur.
One exterior proposal could be to let issues stand and go away nicely sufficient alone.
However given her wokeness, Gov. Maura Healey will help the modifications, irrespective of the historical past concerned.
Most politicians, Democrat, Republicans, liberals, moderates and conservatives fold if they’re subjected to sufficient stress from activists and progressives.
Recall Republican Gov. Charlie Baker in the course of the insanity following the killing of Floyd.
Issues have been so unhealthy and so uncontrolled that Baker succumbed to stress and eliminated the one Accomplice Civil Struggle memorial in Massachusetts.
It was a granite memorial on George’s Island in Boston Harbor marking the deaths of 13 younger Accomplice farm boys who died whereas imprisoned at Fort Warren.
Hardly anybody knew the memorial even existed, not to mention visited. Now it’s gone.
One other, albeit small, piece of historical past erased. Now the activists and progressives would erase the seal.
Massachusetts ought to be taught from Cracker Barrel. If it ain’t broke, don’t repair it.
Veteran political reporter Peter Lucas may be reached at: peter.lucas@bostonherald.com
