You know the one: "Don't Tread on Me." It's all over the Glenn Beck rally diaries, having been adopted by the Tea Partiers. Of all their appropriations of Revolutionary War symbolism, this is one that annoys me as much as it scares me.
It annoys me partly as a wildlife buff who thinks literal rattlesnakes are actually pretty cool. (More on that in a moment.*) It annoys me further as a US citizen who believes that our revolution belongs to me, too, and to everyone else they don't like. It even annoys me as someone who has occasionally identifed with the spirit of feisty defensiveness the flag traditionally embodied.
That's not something everyone would admit to identifying with---the instinctive lashing out when threatened of a venomous, pea-brained creature. But we all feel that way now and then, right?
No, what's scary is, of course, what they imply by the flag: First, that the equivalent of the snake's defensive strike is lethal force directed against ... somebody. Second, that whatever lethal force they are provoked into using is defensive by definition. And finally what they consider to be "treading on" them, provocation sufficient for violent overthrow of the government. That seems to be the fact that they lost the last election. Maybe scariest of all is that all this is considered perfectly appropriate by those for whom the Tea Partiers act as shock troops.
*FWIW, the "Don't Tread On Me" flag has flown outside what I believe is the ranger residence at the entrance to a state park near me, where rattlesnakes are quite common. I'm 99% sure it is literally a warning not to tread on them, but that 1% uncertainty, man...