Is it a symbol of peace?

What if it represents the opposite of that meaning.  That by wearing a peace symbol, you are stating that you will not succumb to the violence that it represents?  Also, Mike, if the world remained ignorant of the origins of the peace sign, it would represent just that ~ a wish for peace.  On another side of this coin, I have found many mistakes printed in Wikipedia.  You can start your own topic and you can submit changes to the information there.  Take it for what it is ~ information that may or may not be accurate.  Do more research in historical texts.

Skitch, it means just what it says, no more, no less. 

Do you actually wear that thing?  Tie-dyed shirts and bandannas are one thing, but now that I read it from Rock Mike, I have to think back on all the people I saw with it tattooed on them.  They were brutal and cold.  They had a mean streak no one could tolerate.  They were always ready to start a fight.

I guess the worst thing about them was their mindless treachery.  These hypocrites always said one thing and meant another, which means no one can trust them.

I never got along with hypocrites.  I never got along with hippies.  Now I see that they were always the same people.

It figures!

I went online for a while to scrape up more on what Rock Mike said.  I don't scare easily but this scares me.

The R'a Mentep cult existed in Egypt for another 1,600 years.  They held the people in terror.  Threats of poison used on the children of anyone who didn't knuckle under kept everyone in line. 

One of their favorite poisons was a mixture of ergot mold, scorpion and asp venom.  They sprayed the poison on anyone they felt like torturing.  If you didn't wash it off within half a minute, the next few days would see you in nightmare convulsions, swollen to where your skin would split, and die within a week . . . of dehydration.  Anyone who tried to end the pain of a R'a Mentep victim got the poison next!

R'a Mentep controlled Egypt through Cleopatra and her brother Ptolemy until the Romans came in AD 31 after the battle of Actium.

2/3 of the Romans died to R'a Mentep poison.  It was the only thing that really terrified them.

The Romans tried to hush it up but it still dots burial papyrii.  Obelisks and mostabas were not allowed to mention this hated cult.  Only burial papyrii could mention how the victim died, and that was only supposed to be seen by Osirus.

Casawallon came to Rome to tell the Roman Senate to leave Britain, and his spies saw that horror.  It came back with them to England, Ireland, Scotland, Cornwall, and Wales.  It started appearing on oak trees.  And carved into Romans the Druids, Picts, Celts, and Scots nailed to the oaks. 

They called it the Crow's Foot.  "The Cross of Christ broken and burned with Christ and his followers damned for eternity."

When the Romans left British territory, the Druids remembered that it was enough to scare hardened Romans to break and run.

The Scotch-Irish who came to America brought that symbol with them.  It morphed again to the Ku Klux Klan emblem.  You know that story.

Then Hitler found it useful, so he morphed it again, making the Swastika, and noted that his views and those of the KKK were the same. 

Rebellious baby boomers became teenagers and turned into hippies.  The Swastika wasn't mean enough for them or hypocritical enough, so they resurrected the Crow's Foot and called it a sign of "peace."

It appears in the canton of the Manson Family "flag."

Thank GOD there are no hypocrites in Congress. Can you imagine this country being run by a bunch of hippies? And the banking industry. What would happen if the hippies were in charge of your money? And church. Can you picture a pew full of hippies? The First Communal Congregation of What's Happening, Dude. God would not be pleased!

At least the symbol that all Christians embrace has an unsullied beginning.

Sir Caustik

Actually, you're completely wrong and terribly misinformed.

What later became an internationally recognized symbol for peace was originally designed for the British nuclear disarmament movement. It was designed and completed on 21 February 1958 by Gerald Holtom, a professional designer and artist in Britain for the 4 April march planned by the Direct Action Committee Against Nuclear War (DAC) from Trafalgar Square, Londonto the Atomic Weapons Research Institute at Aldermaston Christan. The symbol was later adopted by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). It was adopted by first the 1960s Anto War Movement, then the counterculture, and finally the popular culture of the time.

The peace sign flag first became known in the United States in 1958 whenAlbert Bigelow, a pacifist protester, sailed his small boat outfitted with the CND banner into the vicinity of a nuclear test.

The peace sign button was imported into the United States in 1960 by Philip Altbach, a freshman at the University of Chicago who traveled to England to meet with British peace groups as a delegate from the Student Peace Union (SPU). Altbach purchased a bag of the "chickentrack" buttons while he was in England, and brought them back to Chicago, where he convinced SPU to reprint the button and adopt it as its symbol. Over the next four years, SPU reproduced and sold thousands of the buttons on college campuses. By the late 1960s, the peace sign had become an international symbol adopted by anti-war protestors.

The symbol itself is a combination of the Semaphore signals for the letters "N" and "D," standing for N uclear D isarmament. In semaphore the letter "N" is formed by a person holding two flags in an upside-down "V," and the letter "D" is formed by holding one flag pointed straight up and the other pointed straight down. Superimposing these two signs forms the shape of the peace symbol. In the first official CND version (which was preceded by a ceramic pin version that had straight lines, but was short lived) the spokes curved out to be wider at the edge of the circle, which was white on black.

Holtom later wrote to Hugh Brock, editor of Peace News explaining the genesis of his idea in greater depth: "I was in despair. Deep despair. I drew myself: the representative of an individual in despair, with hands palm outstretched outwards and downwards in the manner of Goya's Peasant Before the Firing Squad. I formalised the drawing into a line and put a circle round it." Ken Kolsbum, a correspondent of Holtom's, says that the designer came to regret the symbolism of despair, as he felt that peace was something to be celebrated and wanted the symbol to be inverted.

During the Viet Nam War, the John Birch Society and other right-wing groups propagated their belief that the CND symbol was a sign of the Antichrist. "One Bircher wrote that the broken cross had originally been devised by the Roman emperor Nero who had Saint Peter crucified upon it upside down."

WOW!  I am not worthy, but thank you.  Thank you VERY much.  WOW. ~ MW

This is a song about American POWER and the will to win.  It also refers to that unique trait of American improvisation.

"The will to war, the will to power, the will to overpower." ~ Friedrich Nietzche

If I was a Marine, I would say Hooraah!  Since I'm not, but still certainly entitled to talk to them, I say this:  Let all Marines say Hooraah, now!  (was that really necessary?)