Saturday, May 20, 2006

forward!

Say whatever else you want about Wisconsin, it has the best state motto in the entire U.S. of A.: Forward! It's so good that it's worth saying once more with boldface feeling: Forward!

I was having dinner with some fellow Midwesterners awhile back, and we talked about coming to Boston and suddenly seeing all these New Hampshire license plates with their "motto": Live Free or Die. Don't get me wrong--I'm very fond of living free myself. However, as part of my general opposition to capital punishment and committment to civil liberties, I believe that if a person does not wish to live free, the State should not step in and kill them, and I believe New Hampshire should not be using its license plates to threaten innocent motorists.

5 comments:

Belle Reve said...

True story.
It's 1996, and I'm in Madison for the first time. We're at the Farmers' Market, and I remember noticing that the doors into the State Capitol each have the word FORWARD on their handles. And I thought it meant that the doors had to be pushed OPEN.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, I can't compete with that. I was born in Florida (Motto: "In God we trust," meaning "we can't even bother to think up one of our own") and now live in Missouri (Motto: "Salus populi lex suprema esto," meaning "We know you think we're a bunch of ignorant hicks, so we'll have a Latin motto for a little class").

Belle Reve said...

Is no one going to mention that this post is dated IN THE FUTURE? The date is tomorrow's? Anyone? Anyone?

jeremy said...

I added a disclaimer regarding the timestamps to my sidebar a few months ago.

Anonymous said...

I heard New Hampshire was going to merge with Vermont and the new state license plate will read "Live Free or Whatever."

Thanks, I'm here all week. Try the veal.