New Flag for North Carolina

North Carolina's flag isn't too bad:

Of course, I have some picayune problems with it, mostly in reference to the text on the little banners, but by and large this is a neat flag design.  Large blocks of color, no distracting or minute details, just remove the text and we can call it a day:

But you know, I can't help the feeling that I've seen this flag somewhere before, like it may be a design already in use. . .:

This, in case you don't know, is the flag of Texas, a very well-known and much beloved symbol of all things Texan.  In predates the North Carolina flag as a state symbol by about fifteen years and was used before that by the Texas Republic, quite a significant pedigree in my opinion.  In contrast, North Carolina first adopted a state flag in 1861 when it seceded from the Union and it looked like this:

It was changed after the Civil War to its current design, which I think was unfortunate.  With the secession flag, North Carolina at least toyed with the color scheme (plus I think the big star on red looks spiffy), rather than the modern day flag which is essentially the flag of Texas inverted and defaced with text.

In the interest of creating a new design, and in deference to the Texas flag (which, as I've said in an earlier post, is terrific), I present my idea on a new flag for North Carolina:

This preserves the basic idea behind the current flag, but changes it in enough ways as to be easily distinguishable from that of Texas.  I returned to the color scheme of the secession-era flag and removed the star and text.  The template for this flag is actually the flag of the city of Memphis, Tennessee, though it had a seal on the vertical stripe.  The red on the hoist is nice and broad, hopefully separating it from any tri-colors or other Texas-esque flags out there.  No text, images, or crazy designs, just red, white, and blue.  And I suppose, if one was so inclined, the diagonal slant could be reminiscent of North Carolina's western border, but you'll never hear me make such a claim. 

A brief bit of explanation for the slightly ridiculous amount of brown-nosing I did in regards to the flag of Texas.  It is a great state flag, and though that may be my favorite thing about Texas, I feel the few truly original state flags should be defended.  If all the states copied New Mexico, Maryland, and Texas, it would just dilute those designs and leave us with a confusing mess of virtually identical flags, a scenario not too different from what we have now with all the seal-on-blue banners.