I love OUR flag       Revised                                                   Tan  5/27/24

Whenever I see an American flag, my spirit swells with reverence and pride.  It started in early childhood reciting the Pledge of Allegiance at Haddam Elementary School.  In Girl Scouts, our meetings held at the Higganum United Methodist Church started with a small color guard presenting the colors and we’d say the pledge. We closed the meetings with lowering the flag, singing Taps.  We learned the proper way to fold the flag, keep the flag off the floor. We carried flag in our town’s beloved Memorial Day Parade. 

Into my adult life, I always felt great love for the flag. Being married to a man in the Army and Gulf War, who is former police officer, made this banner evermore personal to me. Coming home from traveling abroad, I am comforted by our stars and stripes in our homeland.

I know our country is not perfect.  Yes, we are divided, especially in politics. Who knows what the November election is going to bring?  What I do know is that I love our flag. OUR flag.

Admitting that I love the flag might make some think I am part of the far right or a faction of our country who some believe have somehow commandeered the American flag as a symbol for their “side.” 

I saw another one today at our town’s Memorial Day Parade, “Disrespect this, (picture of the flag) and get a boot in your ass!” Oh, how I cringe driving past flags tacked on plywood signs with a former president’s name scrawled beneath in spray paint!

I hate that such a ubiquitous, aggressive display of our precious flag has enough people refusing to fly the flag, or at least worried about it for fear of being identified with a specific faction. 

I met a young man selling plants from his greenhouse in area where many of his neighbors were prolific flag fliers and posting MAGA messages on their lawns. After we had chatted for a while, my husband and I mentioned we were on a Democratic Town Committee in our home town. Thinking he had to appease the neighbors by flying the flag, and by that he might have offended us, the young man apologized for his American flag in the front yard. 

“Don’t apologize,” I said. “It’s your flag, too!” 

He is not the only one bowing to the pressure. My in-laws attend an “open and affirming” church that took down their American flag hanging beside the rainbow flag over their front entrance. “Some thought the American flag would be seen as offensive,” my father-in-law said, disgusted by the change.

What can we do? 

Short of an ad campaign on TikTok (A Chinese company!) declaring the American flag belongs to all of us, and not just a faction, we dismantle the perception by EVERYONE flying the flag. Fly it as an American Republican, or an American Democrat, or an American Independent, an American Believer or Atheist, and an American Straight or LGBTQIA+ person. Display it at your home, on the road, at your campsite. Carry it in parades along with all other multi-colored, meaningful banners. Fly it fearlessly at your business, church, synagogue, or mosque. 

“I pledge allegiance to OUR flag, of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.”