[wku man]

"The symbol was associated with iron-fisted 20th-century dictators."

Sheeesh...where to start?

1) It's still associated with iron-fisted dictators, the Obammunist, for one.
2) Those "iron-fisted dictators" were/are generally Communists, being as the hammer and sickle was the symbol of the Soviet Communist Party.
3) This moron writer must be talking to folks under 30, because everyone else should clearly remember the significance of the hammer and sickle.

Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!

[mrreaganaut]

The reporter just can't bring himself (herself? itself?) to utter the word, "Communist." It's probably painful to admit that the symbol might be associated by some (though nobody at the newspaper) with dictatorship. It's also sad that this probably is news to anyone under 25 who went to public school.

[katana]

Real proletariat workers and peasants, in America, haven't existed as definable classes since respectively, the early 20th century and, well, EVER. Modern Capitalism, the trade union movement, and the Second World War turned the former into the middle class and individual yeomen farmers were never serfs or peasants in the European sense.

So instead of the Hammer and Sickle the classes supporting our Bolshevik leaders need a new and more accurate symbol. How about a crack pipe superimposed on a welfare check?