Wasn't a flag like this the first flag of Brazil after the abolishment of the monarchy?
Flag Thread V
Wasn't a flag like this the first flag of Brazil after the abolishment of the monarchy?
Flag of a Spain which is inherited by an alt-Phillip the Fair who's mother is not Mary of Burgundy, but someone called Elisabeth of Swabia. She is an ATL heir of the House of Toggenburg, an OTL Swiss family which in this timeline manages to consolidate several Swiss counties and conquer Zurich. Her inheritance is the most attractive one available for Maximilian to snatch up because Charles the Bold has a son. But Maximilian still manages to grab Spain for his descendants, albeit with no Burgundian inheritance. Hence the Black and Gold Imperial colors. This TL also has no Switzerland.
This flag is from a TL where the Savoys manage to grab the Duchy of Milan and the Iron Crown of the Lombards in the 18th century, never having to settle for Sardinia.
I think the Habsburg flag might look more unified if there was more black on the coat of arms and the yellows matched.
Can yourself or someone else explain (again) why they have to be different?
Where is John Galt?: The Martian Free State
This flag was inspired by a future history AHC I posted awhile ago. It never took off and I'd forgotten about it until today, go figure. Anyways, the challenge was to think up a possible Cold War on Mars between Objectivism and Georgism, and in that spirit I present the Martian Free State! Founded during the lawlessness of twenty-first century space colonization, the Free State proclaims itself sole legal owner of Mars and its orbits on behalf of a consortium of wealthy families who overcame personal rivalries in search of somewhere out of the reach of the increasingly aggressive looters of the Old Earth governments. Things... haven't quite gone to plan. Oh, actually making it to the red planet went well enough, and the archipelago of corporate colonies and personal fiefdoms was established in short order. It was legally dubious, but enough money in the right hands back on Earth made all the difference. No, the problem was the people.
The simple fact was that the Objectivism that formed the foundation of the new social contract just wasn't popular with the working masses imported to do all the labor for some reason. Some people just don't have the common sense to know that they're expected to pay for things like water and air at market prices! And of course they'd have to pay their own way off the planet if they didn't like it so much. The already steep wealth inequality grew more intense as the years wore on and what passed for the middle class found itself squeezed ever tighter in the grips of a free market and the lower classes eked out whatever living they could in a world without any sort of social safety net for the unemployed. Eventually the disorganized cries of the downtrodden coalesced into a single message preaching that the evils of rent-seeking were the poison at the heart of the Martian system. Georgism had come to Mars...
The flag of the Martian Free State uses cyan to represent Objectivism, gold to represent free enterprise and red to represent the planet itself, with Atlas supporting Mars as a testament to the strength of the consortium that arranged to settle it.
This flag was inspired by a future history AHC I posted awhile ago. It never took off and I'd forgotten about it until today, go figure. Anyways, the challenge was to think up a possible Cold War on Mars between Objectivism and Georgism, and in that spirit I present the Martian Free State! Founded during the lawlessness of twenty-first century space colonization, the Free State proclaims itself sole legal owner of Mars and its orbits on behalf of a consortium of wealthy families who overcame personal rivalries in search of somewhere out of the reach of the increasingly aggressive looters of the Old Earth governments. Things... haven't quite gone to plan. Oh, actually making it to the red planet went well enough, and the archipelago of corporate colonies and personal fiefdoms was established in short order. It was legally dubious, but enough money in the right hands back on Earth made all the difference. No, the problem was the people.
The simple fact was that the Objectivism that formed the foundation of the new social contract just wasn't popular with the working masses imported to do all the labor for some reason. Some people just don't have the common sense to know that they're expected to pay for things like water and air at market prices! And of course they'd have to pay their own way off the planet if they didn't like it so much. The already steep wealth inequality grew more intense as the years wore on and what passed for the middle class found itself squeezed ever tighter in the grips of a free market and the lower classes eked out whatever living they could in a world without any sort of social safety net for the unemployed. Eventually the disorganized cries of the downtrodden coalesced into a single message preaching that the evils of rent-seeking were the poison at the heart of the Martian system. Georgism had come to Mars...
The flag of the Martian Free State uses cyan to represent Objectivism, gold to represent free enterprise and red to represent the planet itself, with Atlas supporting Mars as a testament to the strength of the consortium that arranged to settle it.
Clear the Way for Liberty!: The Martian Commonwealth Front
Life on Mars was not what we were promised. We were told we'd be explorers, blazing a trail in the unexplored frontier, but all we were was chattel signing away our freedom, even if the fine print on the contracts was never so blunt. Worked to the bone just to afford air! Forced to ration every drop of water or scrap of food! And all the while certain that as we hovered on the edge of starvation the members of the consortium grew fat on our labor and the profits of the mines. We built everything that makes life possible while they came when we were finished just to lord over us. But change is in the air. From one battered edition brought over on the journey from Earth Progress and Poverty has been copied and quietly circulated among the masses, and the time is ripe for a change of management. Welcome to the Martian Commonwealth Front!
In many ways it's no surprise Georgism would catch on here, after all Mars is a vast planet teeming with resources, only made habitable by constant struggle and only "owned" by the flimsiest of legal justifications according to legal standards 245 million miles away. It's not "pure" Georgism, of course. We built the domes and the settlements together, and since we literally can't live without them that makes them common property. We still believe in private property of course. a person should be able to profit from their own improvements on the land, but they should be able to breathe freely while they're doing it. As for the selfish bastards at the top, if they don't like it they can go out into the wilderness and stake their own claim- they can hunker down in the Free State of Galt's Gulch for all we care.
Since most Georgist symbols are a bit too terracentric, the Commonwealth Front repurposes the socialist starry plow, since the constellation is visible from Mars too. The contrast of yellow and red is meant to suggest both a bustling domed settlement and the heavily market-oriented socialism championed by the Martian Georgist movement.
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I might whip out one more if an idea strikes me 🤔 The original idea for this series was an old reddit post I saw about Georgism being implemented on Mars that was countered by a linked policy paper from an Objectivist group that said Rand should reign supreme on the red planet. If nothing else it's hilarious to me the political dividing line isn't cultural but whether land counts as capital or a separate factor of production 😂 I suppose the opposing axis would probably be something like the Green/Red terraforming divide in the Mars trilogy.
Some alternate version of the Regressives from my timeline Power Without Knowledge timeline then? I suppose there would be some amusing symmetry, since George was popular in the early twentieth century and wanted industry and social safety net, Rand was popular postwar and wanted industry without a safety net and Kaczynski got rolling as the century was running out and wasn't so sure about this whole industry thing.
Flag of Republic of Japan
A flag of Republic of Japan (日本共和国, Nihon Kyōwakoku). This picture is composed of white background and a Sun wherein exists a bird hit by an arrow. This bird which has three legs is called Yatagarasu (八咫烏) and has special meaning in Japanese culture: the Yatagarasu and Sun represent the authority of the Emperor of Japan. Thus hitting the bird by arrow means abolishing the monarchy by force.
The kami Yatagerasu has three legs, just like the sun crow of Chinese myth, which likely served as the basis for Yatagerasu (who supposedly helped Japan's first emperor to rule over Yamato, the traditional Japanese heartland).
Right, in Chinese and Japanese myth, we imagine that the bird of the sun has three legs, what amazing this living creature is! And in Chinese myth, there were ten suns in ancient times, but a brave archer shot nine of them, so that's my ancestors explained why there's only one sun in the sky
(Colour representation: Eagle for the national bird, Washington as the first president, light green for the Irish, blue for the sea, the text in the circle says 'Union Of America, 1860')
Alternate flag for my War of Northern Secession thread.
The timeline is still being worked on, as I have just done the election of 1860, so check it out! Next part will be out either today or early tomorrow, though I'm not sure.
"My fellow Earthicans...": The United States of the Earth
Based on an odd list of proposed amendments to the Constitution and using a modified version of a T-and-O map I found online, I present to you the flag for the United States of the Earth!
Based on an odd list of proposed amendments to the Constitution and using a modified version of a T-and-O map I found online, I present to you the flag for the United States of the Earth!
In a world where the Corrupt Bargain was never struck, president Tilden and the Democratic majority in the House became increasingly frustrated by Republican efforts in the Senate to block them from ending Reconstruction. There was even talk in Republican circles of adding new sparsely-populated states to cement their majority. Something radical needed to be done. The end result of an orgy of bribery, shady deals and outright voter suppression would be the adoption of the 16th Amendment, in a stroke abolishing the Senate entirely. While some in the party were wary of such a drastic change, even the amendment's naysayers would have no idea how drastically this would change the United States- the 16th Amendment had been adopted at great cost and with tremendous difficulty, but absent the Senate future amendments would have a much easier time of it. Largely hamstrung by a not-incorrect belief on the part of the voters that they were too deeply in the pocket of the rich, the Republicans would be doomed to a slow extinction, though the Second Era of Good Feelings was not to last as the Democrats themselves splintered, with the Populist Party swelling in size and using the now much lower threshold to pass several new amendments in the late 1870s. The 17th Amendment banning religious figures from government office or from receiving government funds had been aimed squarely at Catholics and Mormons but due to the Free Exercise Clause was applied across the board. The 18th Amendment sought to make the Executive Branch more responsive to popular will, replacing the Presidency with a popularly elected three-member body called the Executive Council.
After roughly a decade of Populist dominance over the rump Democrats and Republicans, a new party would coalesce in the early 1890's calling itself the Cooperative Brotherhood (originally Social Democracy of America) a big tent utopian socialist party seeking to combine political action and the formation of intentional communities as a path to change, newly viable in a world where the House of Representatives was effectively the only game in town. Brotherhood control of the government would see the admission of the states of Dakota, Deseret and Yellowstone, as well as an earlier Spanish-American War that would see the Philippines and Cuba admitted as states as well. The 1890s would see three new amendments added to the Constitution- the 19th Amendment changed the name of the nation to the United States of the Earth, while the 20th Amendment abolished the Army and Navy, with Coast Guard expanded into a vast Peace Force designed to span the nation's empire and enforce its control with a combined arms doctrine while sidestepping the Posse Comitatus Act entirely. The 21st Amendment was largely a result of discontent in religious circles (especially among the new pro-American elite governing Cuba and the Philippines), and would acknowledge Jesus and the Christian God as the final arbiters of human affairs. In practice this was a fairly toothless symbolic gesture, with "In God We Trust" made the official motto of the USE and a resurgence in popularity of the deistic Jefferson Bible. The flag of the USE, designed to be distinct from the defunct American one but still recognizable, was a version of the Serapis flag with a modified T-and-O map in the canton.
The Democrats had used the abolition of the Senate to cement what at the time seemed like a lock on Congress, but the successor Populists didn't like it one bit when the Brotherhood admitted nonwhite states to do the same. The aptly named Populist Era would see yet three more amendments designed to restrict interracial mixing and prevent further foreign adventures to acquire territory, with the 22nd Amendment criminalizing interracial marriage and the 23rd Amendment banning divorce regardless of race. The 24th Amendment would establish a national referendum to declare war, with the "Yes" voters automatically drafted for the duration if the vote was successful. It hadn't passed soon enough to prevent entry into the Great War but it was the law of the land now. Fears by some Populists that this would lead to the drafting of women into the Peace Force were quickly dashed by the Brotherhood's failure to secure a women's suffrage amendment, though any relief was short lived as the states gradually passed their own women's suffrage laws. Populist hopes that the 24th Amendment would stop Brotherhood adventurism cold found themselves proven wrong in 1916, with Pancho Villa's raid on Columbus, Apachea negating the requirement of a referendum and proving casus belli for intervention in the Mexican Revolution.
The postwar period would see growing income inequality in the USE, with the final straw coming in form of a collapsing stock market that would go on to spark a global financial crisis- the Great Depression had begun. The thirties would see the adoption of another trinity of new amendments as well as the addition of new territory. The creation of the state of Norteño out of states seceding from Mexico would see the Brotherhood back in charge and they fully intended to use that control while they had it. The 25th Amendment would cap personal wealth to one million dollars in a bid to curb income inequality, though Supreme Court rulings that this number was subject to inflation and did not cover investments sapped it of its intended effect somewhat. The 26th Amendment wasn't strictly a new one, merely stripping out the language in the 24th Amendment requiring the drafting of those voting yes in a war referendum, especially in light of now universal women's suffrage. Although a Prohibition amendment was proposed, it was ultimately shot down as too divisive in the ethnically diverse United States of the Earth, with the 27th Amendment merely making public intoxication a federal crime, leaving a patchwork of wet and dry states to decide the issue on their own.
As war loomed in Europe, the USE remained firmly uninterested, instead focusing its attention on the threat Japan posed to the Philippines and the rest of the vast nation's pacific territory. The Axis Powers may have been sure of themselves but they weren't insane, with Japanese officials shooting down any plan that involved antagonizing the New World Colossus in any way, keeping Germany and Italy uninvolved in the process. Largely sitting out the early stages of World War II, the citizens of the USE would be moved to action by atrocities in Europe and the Pacific, invoking a War Referendum for the first time. Although the 26th Amendment removed the threat of an automatic draft, vast numbers of men and women reported for duty in the wake of the declaration of war, with the sea of troops turning the tide and the vast military buildup bringing the country roaring out of the Great Depression. In the wake of the conflict the Populists would be apoplectic. Having largely opposed the war, firebrands in the party viewed the new state of South Japan as yet another insult to the American national character, even as the voluntary annexation of Australia after the war drew less criticism for... reasons best not discussed. Although in terms of sheer numbers the Brotherhood held an edge, the public was war weary as the conflict finally ended, with low voter turnout largely credited with the ensuing Populist victory. Populist control of the House would see two new amendments, with the 28th Amendment creating a federal income tax to ease the cost of prohibition, though the maximum rate of the tax was limited to 25% or less. The 29th Amendment guaranteed the right of citizens to voluntarily segregate themselves.
The late 20th Century would see the globe divided roughly into three vast power blocks. Spilling out from the New World, the United States of the Earth held dominion over all the remaining independent nations of the Americas, with states from the Japanese Islands to Liberia. Canada, India and vast chunks of Africa were directly suborned into the vast imperial Franco-British Union, with the rest of Western Europe firmly in thrall. Holding the heartland of the world island was the Fourth International, with the USSR and the PRC jointly holding court over Asia's proletarians in the face of colonialism whether from Europe or the Americas. The vast industrialization that characterized the early phase of the Triumvirate Era would play havoc with the world's climate, leading directly to the passage of the 30th Amendment creating an inalienable right to a healthy and livable environment. In practice the passage of the 29th Amendment, combined with the origin of West Virginia, had created a precedent for the division of existing states in the event of "irreconcilable differences", which Supreme Court statute determined need only involve the federal government if the result would cross existing state lines. The fracturing of the vast states established by the Cooperative Brotherhood would make the passage of new amendments difficult going forward, but perhaps given the wild shifts the Constitution had undergone over the preceding century perhaps that was for the best.
