Tuesday, June 23, 2015

A Flag Post

I am getting tired of reading about the "Confederate" (really the Army of Northern Virginia) flag and how it supposedly represents an evil far worse than anything Stalin, Mao, or Pol Pot ever did. So I am posting a picture of a flag I like. The flag on the right represents the Kyrgyz Republic where I am right now visiting family and in-laws.  From a design point of view the Kyrgyz flag is very well done. At the time it was adopted the use of a red background was controversial due to its association with the Soviet past and communism. None of the other former Soviet republics went with an all red background. The closest was Belarus which just took the sickle and hammer off of the flag of the BSSR which was about two thirds red and one third green. The Kyrgyz flag adopted in 1992 in contrast looks very different from the older Soviet flags despite having the same color scheme. The central symbol of a tunduk (the top of yurt) inside a sun with forty rays hearkens back to Kyrgyzstan's pre-Soviet past. The forty rays being representative of the 40 Kyrgyz tribes that united in the national epic Manas.

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