The Nazis don’t own the rights to avian iconography

They don’t have an exclusive claim to the eagle’s image, and they certainly don’t have a claim to the likeness of the bald eagle, which has been the United States’ official bird since 1782.

That this needs to be said is somewhat insane, but that’s apparently where we are today.

This bizarre bit of silliness all starts with a new logo on House Speaker Paul Ryan’s speaker.gov webpage. Kenneth Pennington, Sen. Bernie Sanders’, I-Vt., digital director, saw the logo Friday, and commented on social media:

“[T]here’s something off with this logo but I can’t quite put my finger on it,” he coyly remarked.

Many random social media users replied to his comment by filling in the blank, saying, yes, the logo looks like something one would find in Adolf Hitler’s office.

Amazingly enough, more than just random Internet people agreed with Pennington. A startling number of journalists joined in Friday, agreeing that the logo looks like something from the Third Reich.

From U.S. News’ Gabrielle Levy:

From Mic’s Tom McKay:

From Vox.com contributor Lee Drutman:

City Lab’s Kriston Capps, Bloomberg BNA’s Madi Alexander and the Hollywood Reporter’s Seth Abramovitch also agreed that Ryan’s new logo is very problematic:

The Nazis apparently claimed the right to avian iconography and the Allied powers never thought to take it back.

Let’s try to untangle this mess.

First, the logo on Ryan’s webpage is a modernized version of the seal of the speaker, which dates back to Rep. John William McCormack, who served as speaker from 1962 to 1971. The seal is just a mirror image of the Mace of the United States House of Representatives, which has been in use since Dec.1, 1842. The Mace is topped by a bald eagle perched astride the globe, wings spread and looking westward.

As for the Nazis, they took their eagle from the Weimar Republic, which took it from the Holy Roman Empire, which took it from the Roman empire, and so on. Now it may come as a surprise to some, but the modern West has borrowed a lot from Rome, including paved roads, concrete, welfare and, yes, even symbols involving eagles.

Next, and I can’t believe this needs to be explained, there are clear differences between the Nazi Imperial Eagle and Ryan’s new bald eagle logo.

First, eagles used for American symbols almost invariably have wing feathers pointed diagonally or vertically downward, not horizontally. The speaker.gov logo keeps with this longstanding tradition, which, by the way, predates the Third Reich’s horizontally outstretched bird by several decades. Secondly, the Nazi Reichsadler doesn’t even depict a bald eagle. It depicts the golden eagle. The speaker’s seal, and therefore Ryan’s new logo, features the bald eagle, which is found only in North America.

Read a book, people.

Lastly, imagine the outcry had a GOP senator’s staffer suggested the same of Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., when she served as House Speaker. I suspect the media reaction would have been much angrier. It certainly wouldn’t have involved reporters at major outlets publicly nodding along in agreement.

John F. Kennedy said it well in 1961 when he remarked, “The founding fathers made an appropriate choice when they selected the Bald Eagle as the Emblem of our nation. The fierce beauty and proud independence of this great bird aptly symbolizes the strength and freedom of America.”

The bald eagle is great. That is why it’s our bird. The Nazis get nothing.

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Correction: An earlier version of this story misidentified Tom McKay, who maintains now that he was totally joking about the House Mace Nazi thing, as working for the Washington Post. He works for Mic.