June 14, 2023
Today is Flag Day. Happy Birthday Mr. Trump! That cohabitation of facts, newly noted, gave me some insight into the warm feelings that sometimes come over the former President and inspire his artistic sensibilities.
Three months ago he created a unique work of video performance-art with national significance and impact. His conception challenged all his acknowledged talent for communication, organization, and persuasion across vast bureaucratic domains to accomplish. But so sure was his artistic vision that he succeeded. With what emotional strain that effort cost, we will never know. Too modest is he to dwell on that, when he could simply present to a grateful nation the work he had done.
He had managed to obtain recordings from I don’t know how many men in I don’t know how many different prisons, singing in pretty much the same key and tempo our National Anthem. He then, with technological skills honed during the Covid years, combined those recordings into one vast choir of convicted Jan-6ers. And with that as dramatic background, this humble, plain-spoken American, who has devoted his life to family and public service, declaimed with heart-felt emotion the awesome words of allegiance to our Flag.
1. The flag of 1814 song and story, the Great Garrison Flag at Fort McHenry that guarded the entrance to Baltimore Harbor, was singular in several ways. Not only 15 bright stars did it display, to honor the first two States to join the Union of the original 13, but also 15 broad stripes. It was at the time the largest US flag ever made—30-feet by 42-feet, and weighing 50 pounds, the envy of many a car dealership and patriotic park today. The Commander of Fort McHenry had ordered it to be literally fabricated in anticipation of the British attack on Baltimore. At that pre-industrial time it was made by hand, requiring extra materials and constructive design to support its size and to ensure that it weather the elements.
This was the Star-Spangled Banner witnessed by Francis Scott Key, who was hostage aboard a truce ship anchored in the Patapsco River that empties into the Chesapeake Bay. He witnessed from this situation through a night-long, drenching rain-storm the 25-hour bombardment and shelling on the Fort by the British fleet. He witnessed by the dawn’s early light that the flag was still there, that the Fort had withstood the assault. He experienced, he felt, the relief, the pride, the promise that this young, this adolescent Union, had the strength, the will, the resolve to survive its first War as a Nation united in purpose and principle.
2. The flag to which we pledge allegiance is a real thing, but it is not THE thing. It is a symbol that, as we intone, “stands for” “the Republic.” Now, a Republic is a political concept that denotes a form of government. In a republic the governing body is operated by representatives chosen by the governed. In 1776, when the colonies declared their independence from Britain, they sent representatives to what was called the Continental Congress. But the colonies, now calling themselves States—sovereign States—did not grant the Congress, the central government, much power to do anything. And if they did not like what that body was trying to do, they would simply ignore their responsibility to do it.
This is grossly over-simplified, but correct. After the Revolution, matters did not improve. It occurred to several political thinkers, and was articulated by Alexander Hamilton, that political entities, such as the sovereign states, were not the governed. The only means of compelling a political body to comply with the decisions of a higher government was by force of arms, if persuasion failed, and that would contradict the purpose in forming a common government in the first place.
The governed, properly considered, were the people, the persons, the human beings who populated the States and would be citizens of the national government by virtue of their citizenship of the several States. These could be sanctioned if need be through the mild agency of the courts. The shield of the law or the sword of war. This was a fundamental choice of Union.
So we pledge allegiance to the Flag that symbolizes that choice of governance—a Union of the People, one Nation, indivisible, represented at the national level by officials of their choosing from amongst themselves, for the purpose of securing liberty and justice for all of them. That “all” means every one, because, if not every one of the People is equally entitled to and secure in their liberty, then only some are; and if only some, then perhaps only one. And there lies tyranny, not justice.
3. The third flag venerated and brandished by some in this country, rich with its own history and associations, is the Confederate Flag, more properly, the battle flag of the Confederate States of America. This, too, is a symbol. It stands for dis-Union—literally, for breaking apart the Nation into separate political entities. It stands for so much more besides; but as a political symbol it rejects the Union, the one Nation of the People, “indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
This is the flag of the Jan-6ers, of the Charlottesville 2017 “Unite-the-Right” rally, of the zealots among the MAGA-Patriots who snarl violence at any who don’t agree with them. For them it signifies freedom, liberty, but at the personal, “me” level: I’m a true American, and I have the right to do anything I want—THAT level.
This is the flag of cognitive dissonance, the condition of simultaneously holding two incompatible, irreconcilable concepts to be true; as in, liberty and justice for all means liberty and justice for me but not for thee.
Our nation is first and foremost a political nation, created by political principles and documents and actions. Our identity is and should be adherence, or at least allegiance, to those principles, documents and acts. The principles are that all humans are created politically equal, neither master nor servant; and, that all humans are fallible and corruptible. We the People are the People of the USA. The Founding Generation of People asserted the unheard-of proposition that WE have to right to form a government as we see fit. That requires, of course, coming together to agree on what we see as fit, not to impose it. It also requires that, as a unified Nation of People, we consent to abide by majority rule. We certainly may continue to disagree and to try to persuade others to our positions. But neither the majority nor the minority nor any individual can act to deprive any of the People of their civic and political rights or their inherent rights to self-agency within the legitimate operation of our governing framework.
I was a young man during that earlier recent period of political and cultural upheaval known as the 1960s. And so were other folks who might well have become parents and grandparents of the present-day celebrants of the confederate flag. Lots of those folks would come out to holler at the long-hairs and bra-less, the flower children and peaceniks. What they would shout or paint on their placards was, “America! Love it or leave it!” To tell the truth, I kind of feel like saying the same thing to their descendants: If you don’t subscribe to the political promise of this nation—that We the People are the source of political authority in this country; that We the People means every one of us, because every one of us is born with the same inalienable rights; and that We the People have constituted our government to serve and protect us and our children with the Blessings of Liberty, then perhaps it is time for you to move on to some unoccupied part of the world where you can be your own king.
FACT CHECK: According to Variety.com (by-line, Charna Flam) 3/11/23, CNN reported that “the J6 Prison Choir requested that former President Trump record his part for their upcoming song.” But that may well be Fake News.
The Long Clasp 