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EXPIRED FLAG THEORY by Atlas Al

View Comments 30 November 2009

By Atlas Al

Once upon a time, I believed a person’s flag should change if their country’s borders and/or name changed. As stated in the Constitution of Flagging, “Flags change with the tides of international politics.” Now, I couldn’t disagree more with my own statement. Understand that Atlas Al (me) is not judge and jury when it comes to flagging doctrine. I simply put forward my best, most well-thought out proposition on how the world should lay claim to flags.

Recently, I conducted an informal survey about claiming “expired” flags and the results were more than convincing. If the majority of the general public wants to amend the constitution, then by all means let’s make the adjustments. I really like the idea of expired flags because they’re so unique, special to have, and nobody can claim them anymore; like a discontinued model of a car or product, they’re rare. I mean, how cool is that? It’s perfectly normal and acceptable to claim new flags—as in new countries. Why shouldn’t we be able to claim expired flags as well?

My first thought about expired flags (aka collector’s edition flags, cancelled model flags) is that it can’t possibly work because of the “one flag per shag” rule we use for dual citizens. If you shagged a Tibetan chick before 1950, you can lay claim to the expired Tibetan flag. Putting politics aside, if you shagged the same chick after 1950, you shouldn’t be able to get the Chinese flag as well. It’s unfair to claim two flags from the same person, and most, if not all people, would agree. If we follow the “one flag per shag” rule, we could say that you cannot shag the same person for their new flag, if their country has changed names. To reiterate once more, whatever flag the person is at the time of the shag, is the flag you got.

What’s more, minor name changes shouldn’t count as expired flags. For example, if a country changed from a monarchy to a republic. To qualify as an expired flag, the changed name or borders must be a drastic “rebranding” like Czechoslovakia separating into the two sovereign states of Czech Republic and Slovakia—a classic example of an expired flag whose name and borders have changed. To say someone is Czechoslovakian is much different than saying someone is a Czech or a Slovakian.

[For the record, I retract the statements I made on this blog in a not so long ago post entitled Fall of a Wall = Death of a Flag]

Flags of the World, European flags, Czech flag, Slovakian flag, Chinese flag