Blue only US flag?

November 14, 2011 6:38 PM

I am looking for "left" or "blue state" American flags or patches in which all the colored part of the flag is blue (eg blue stripes instead of red). Maybe I just cannot get the correct search terms, but I have not been able to find these. Anyone know where such an animal can be got?
posted by ackptui to law & government (9 answers total)

I agree with villanelles at dawn -- this is not a common way of expressing party allegiance, and for good reason. For what it's worth, I did manage to find these greeting cards, and this stock image, but I'd recommend something like the donkey flag as a more effective way to communicate the message.
posted by argonauta at 7:19 PM on November 14, 2011

+1 for choosing something else, such as a donkey flag.

I'm not sure you're going to find a blue and white only flag since it's disrespectful to our flag. A red and white only flag would be disrespectful as well. The U in U.S. stands for united.
posted by 2oh1 at 7:32 PM on November 14, 2011

Why use search terms? Why not just go through the entire list of them? It's only fifty, after all.

The Alaska flag is all blue (except for a few gold stars). The flag of Alabama is red and white. And there are a lot of flags which are blue with a symbol.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 7:36 PM on November 14, 2011

Was something deleted? I thought it wasn't legal to sell this sort of variation on the actual flag. You could probably find someone to sew a version.
posted by Ideefixe at 7:36 PM on November 14, 2011

By the way, the use of "red" and "blue" in this context has nothing to do with the red and blue parts of the flag.

It's a long-standing tradition in the US military that situation maps are drawn with friendly forces in blue and enemy forces in red. Why those colors? Because someone who is red-green color blind (about 12% of the adult male population of the US, including my dad) can tell blue and red apart, and likewise blue-yellow color blind can, too.

Interesting, back in the day the USSR used blue and red, too, but red was friendlies and blue was enemies.

One of my prized possessions is a two-volume set, portfolio size, of the West Point Atlas of American Wars (from 1959, so it stops with Korea). In the Revolutionary war, British forces are red. In WWI and onward, British forces are blue.

Political news coverage has long used red and blue for the same reason, but they had a policy of swapping the colors every four years. So in 2000, the Republicans were blue and the Democrats were red. In 2004 it was swapped, with Republicans being red and Democrats being blue.

But after 2004, terms like "blue state" and "red state" became much more common, and the colors of the 2004 election stuck. (I have sometimes thought that another motive for this was to avoid having the "progressive" (i.e. socialist) leaning Democrats get stuck with red given the historical connotation of "Red" with "communist".)

Anyway, the point is that none of this has anything to do with flags.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 7:44 PM on November 14, 2011

Was something deleted? I thought it wasn't legal to sell this sort of variation on the actual flag.

You can make, design, sell, any variant of the flag you want. First Amendment and all that.

As for actually finding one - an all-blue American flag isn't a commonly understood symbol of left/democratic America. The red/blue distinction is of recent vintage, and an artifact of the way some TV stations happened to use red and blue in the 2000 election coverage; you'll note that the Republican Party doesn't exclusively use red, nor does the Democratic party cover itself only in blue. Both parties identify themselves with the whole country, and therefore use red, white, and blue.
posted by Tomorrowful at 7:57 PM on November 14, 2011

Like this? The keyword here is "subdued", it's the kind of patch the US army uses on camo fatigues, so that's a strong argument against disrespect. Night/urban camo is sometimes blue, look for patches meant for it.
posted by Tom-B at 6:16 AM on November 15, 2011

You might be interested in the US Civil Flag.


But after 2004, terms like "blue state" and "red state" became much more common

2000, not 2004 (according to my memory, and wikipedia agrees).
posted by Rash at 8:25 AM on November 15, 2011

Rash, I stand corrected.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 12:54 PM on November 15, 2011