I have a confession to make. I’ve always found it a little hard to sort out the overlay of two revolutionary images (Franklin’s “Join or Die” with the French Republic’s Tricolor) and the blog’s motto “Renewed moral consensus–for a united America.” So I mocked up some concept art in order to kickstart a little bit of discussion of how the blog’s banner, slogan, and general rhetorical “flavor” are developing.
My own style is more bulldog than raconteur, of course, but I hope that over time I make it evident that my hope is for a comity which results from a reality-based understanding of basic human character and relations–and which therefore reprehends willful distortions of reality, particularly when these are institutionalized by law!
Anyway, here’s some concept art:
(source: banner-small.jpg (955×306))
Yeesh, that’s ugly.
I wasn’t going for the French tricolor but simply a red, white and blue design.
Yeah, I did the mockup with just my wife’s IrfanView filters on the laptop, and gave up on color balance after having to start over due to poor Save/Save As implementation.
I was just trying to think of a way to soften the visual impact a little–I scroll really quickly when I open up a page from the blog at the office. Also, to try to identify visually *who* should “join” and *who* needed to arrive at “consensus” (took quite a lot of searching to find a good tableau of recognizeable buildings in reusable license and a very wide shot).
Anyway, just a notion.
Didn’t have time to address the substance of your post last night, and also wanted to ruminate on it. (But “yeesh that’s ugly” couldn’t wait.)
I don’t think there’s a contradiction between revolutionary imagery and moral consensus. The two are inseparable. In general, only a society committed to running on moral consensus can have a revolution in the strict sense of that word (as distinct from, say, mere rioting or revolt or secession). Other societies recognize no transcendent standard separate from the social or constitutional order as such, to which revolutionaries could appeal in opposition to that order. And a society committed to running on moral consensus will soon find, if they didn’t know it from the start, that the idea suggests at least the potential for revolution, and the constructive political uses of that potential (see Locke’s comment about “the best fence against rebellion”).
All this is laid out with admirable clarity in Chesterton’s Orthodoxy, a book more praised than read.