As I do most mornings I started off the day just glancing that the news of the day. Today I found a CNN article on the recent gerrymandering case in Texas. There is some brazen partisan redistricting underway in Texas, with Republicans attempting to entrench themselves in office. The Supreme Court has lifted a federal guardrail on this gerrymandering case. Lawsuits challenging extreme partisan gerrymanders can still be brought before state court judges. But state laws vary widely in their protections for redistricting practices and state judges differ in their ability to police the thorny political process. Democrats are weighing a counter-offensive in blue states.

Attached to this article was this picture by Brandon Bell from Texas State Representatives where they were conducting a committee meeting on August 1 in Austin, Texas. 

This picture caught my eye. The gentleman in the front right has his Red MAGA Donald Trump hat. He also has his USA, Texas, and Confederate Flag and his walker. Besides the Confederate Flag, none of this is problem. As they say, to each his own. What really caught my eye was his shirt. There is reads, “‘ Remove not the ancient landmark, which thy fathers have set ‘ Proverbs 22:28.” With an image of what I can only assume is a statue of a Confederate leader or General. I might be totally off base but I would assume from these context clues that this person was there in support of the Gerrymandering legislation that was in front of the Texas legislator

I appreciate that people like to keep power and will do almost anything to keep it. That said, I do not think that he appreciated the irony of his shirt. The actual quote from the Bible read:

אַל־תַּ֭סֵּג גְּב֣וּל עוֹלָ֑ם אֲשֶׁ֖ר עָשׂ֣וּ אֲבוֹתֶֽיךָ׃

Do not remove the ancient boundary stone that your ancestors set up. ( Proverbs 22:28)

While the person in question wanted to use Proverbs to legitimate keeping a Confederate landmark it would have been more appropriate to use the citation to legitimate keeping the traditional electoral boundaries. Moving these boundaries might keep people in power, but in moving these “boundary stone” we are moving further away from the representational democracy of our ancestors. It seems that much was lost in translation.