June 14 is “National Flag Day” in America, marking the day in 1777 that the Continental Congress, then engaged in the War for Independence against England, the greatest military power in the world, voted to adopt the Stars and Stripes as the official American Flag. It was not until June 14, 1877, until the 100th anniversary of adoption of the Flag, that there was a general, national observance of adoption of the Flag. In 1916, as WWI raged in Europe, President Wilson, the progressive liberal who campaigned for re-election of the slogan “He Kept Us Out Of War” and then led America into that war shortly after starting his second term, proclaimed June 14 as National Flag Day. President Truman in 1949 made of June 14 a permanent day of observance as National Flag Day
Although the U.S. Army (then the “Continental Army”) had been born two years earlier on the same date, June 14, 1775, there was no official national American Flag until the passage of the resolution to adopt the Stars and Stripes by the Continental Congress convened in the capitol, Philadelphia, on June 14, 1777:
“Resolved, that the Flag of the thirteen United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the Union be thirteen stars, white on a blue field, representing a new constellation.”
In the colonial era, and prior to the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, there was not an official American Flag as there was not an American nation. Rather, there were 13 related but separate colonies of England in America. Those living in English colonies in America did not identify themselves as Americans, or as members of an American nation. For them, their colony was their country. Later, their State was their country.
The adoption of the Stars and Stripes gave to the country a unifying symbol. The significance of symbols in the lives of humans, and nations, should not be underestimated, or undervalued. Human beings do not willingly sacrifice their lives for unembodied, unsymbolized abstractions.
The American Flag is not a piece of colorful cloth to be appreciated for its esthetic value. It is a symbol to be revered, representing all that is good in a nation, and its people – and all the good that both aspire to achieve. For Americans, the Stars and Stripes represents above all – Freedom. Freedom achieved by, and maintained by, the sacrifice of all those American who have given some of their lives, or their very lives, in the defense of the freedom of the nation.
Some 1,400,000 Americans have given their lives defending the American freedom which the Flag represents. They have gone to honored graves covered by the Flag in whose defense they died.
Today, the Flag will fly across the nation as America remembers all of them, and the cause of freedom for which they died, symbolized by our Flag. Ceremonies will be held in villages, towns, cities, states, and in the capitol. Ceremonies including dignified retirement of older Flags by ceremonial burning will take place at American Legion, VFW, and other veterans organizations, as those veterans honor the Flag under which they served.
Today, as on every weekday in the nation’s 125 National Veterans Cemeteries, veterans who served in the nation’s defense will serve on Memorial Honor Details conducting military funeral services for their fellow veterans who are being laid to honorable rest. Every one of those services will include the American Flag under which those veterans served. The Flag will drape their caskets. The Flag will be ceremonially folded in 13 folds by their fellow veterans, comrades that they most often never knew but to whom they share a bond. The tri-cornered folded Flag will be presented by the Honor Detail to the deceased veteran’s loved ones. They will take it as if embracing it, hold it close, and they will most often weep as the Flag is received. That Flag that will have an honored place in their homes, and it will be revered.
Also today, other Americans will disrespect the Flag, the nation it represents, and the veterans who served under it. They will burn the Flag, they will even defecate upon it, in narcissistic self-righteous antics. They will do so because the United States Supreme Court, lawyers all, in 1989 decided in Texas vs. Johnson that burning or defecating on the Flag is a form of speech protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
When the Continental Congress adopted the Stars and Stripes as the American Flag, those living in America shared a common belief in God, worshipped in different ways, but almost universally believed in. At the time of its founding as a nation, in its first census, 98% of Americans identified themselves as Protestant Christians; 1.5% percent identified as Catholic Christians; and 0.5% as Jews. Apparently, no one identified as an atheist, agnostic, or Muslim.
Those Americans who adopted the Flag went on after the winning the War of Independence to create the Constitution of the United States, and the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments. It defies commonsense, and, indeed, it is inconceivable that those Americans believed that burning the American Flag, or defecating on it, was a form of speech protected by the First Amendment which those Americans created.
Can any American other than a lawyer in a dress sitting as a judge as a political appointee, seriously believe that General George Washington, Commander of the Revolutionary Army, President of the Continental Congress which created the Constitution, First President of the United States, and “the Father of his country,” thought he was presiding over adoption of a First Amendment which was intended to protect burning or defecating on the Flag as a constitutionally protected right?
It is better, I suggest, on Flag Day 2011, to listen to the voices of the Founding Fathers who created the American Flag and the Bill of Rights, than the modern lawyers, sitting as life-tenured, unelected, unaccountable judges, who proclaim that the First Amendment was originally intended to protect as “speech” the burning of, or defecating on, the Flag under which so many have served, and for which so many have died.
Therefore, on Flag Day 2011, excuse me if I contend that anyone who thinks that defecating on the Flag is a form of “speech” is talking out of the wrong orifice, even those modern lawyers pontificating and shaping American culture and values from the lofty confines of the U.S. Supreme Court.
[Rees Lloyd is a longtime civil rights/workers rights/veterans rights attorney and a member of the Victoria Taft Blogforce].
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