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Gary M. Galles - Contributor

Mr. Galles is a professor of economics at Pepperdine University. [go to Galles index]

Drawing Inspiration from our Flag
Thoughts on Flag Day...
[Gary M. Galles] 6/13/05

June 14 is Flag Day, celebrating when, in 1777, the Second Continental Congress authorized a new flag to symbolize America. Undermined by cynicism toward America and overwhelmed by D-Day and 4th of July hoopla, it receives little notice. But the importance of what our flag stands for has not always been overlooked.

Perhaps the most inspiring view of our flag was given in an 1861address by Henry Ward Beecher, described as "the most respected and idealized religious figure of the day" and "America's leading moral and spiritual teacher." At a time when many have lost touch with the ideals upon which our experiment in freedom was founded, it is worth revisiting:

"If one asks me the meaning of our flag, I say to him: It means just what Concord and Lexington meant, what Bunker Hill meant. It means the whole glorious Revolutionary War...the rising up of a valiant young people against an old tyranny to establish the most momentous doctrine that the world has ever known--the right of men to their own selves and to their liberties. It means all that the Declaration of Independence meant. It means all that the Constitution of our people, organizing for justice, for liberty, and for happiness, meant."

Unfortunately, many today do not see that in our flag. Some, reflecting our cynical age, see anything valuable it once represented as now lost. Others see it as a symbol of a system they wish to blame for their frustrations and failures, rather than themselves and their choices. Political correctness makes still others see nothing, afraid of any implication they might think one set of beliefs could be better than others. Beecher found all those approaches faulty.

"A thoughtful mind, when it sees a nation's flag, sees not the flag only, but the nation itself...the principles, the truths, the history that belongs to the nation that sets it forth...the American flag is the symbol of liberty, and men rejoiced in it. Not another flag has had such an errand, carrying everywhere, the world around, such hope for freedom--such glorious tidings."

Still other Americans attack, rather than defend, what our flag represents, because many who have made up our government have fallen far short of America's ideals. That is true, if unsurprising, in a government of men by men. But it in no way detracts from the ideals that created our country.

"Our flag carries American ideas, American history, and American feelings...it has gathered and stored chiefly this supreme idea: Divine Right of Liberty in man. Every color means liberty; every form of star and beam or stripe of light means liberty; not lawlessness, not license, but organized institutional liberty--liberty through law, and law for liberty."

Those who, because America falls short of its ideals, have mixed or even hostile feelings toward our flag and the country it represents are misplacing their idealism and efforts. If they recognized, with Beecher, that "The history of this banner is all of Liberty," and put their energy into reclaiming our founding vision of providing the broadest possible canvas for human freedom, rather than just attacking those whose politics they dislike, they could reshape the world.

"This American Flag was the safeguard of liberty...It was an ordinance of liberty by the people, for the people. That it meant, that it means, and, by the blessing of God, that it shall mean to the end of time!"

Henry Ward Beecher's vision of America, captured symbolically in our flag, was much closer to that of our founders than what anyone seems to profess today. We need to catch that vision again, for we have gotten far from what he called our real ideal:"...not that every man shall be on a level with every other man, but that every man shall have liberty to be what God made him, without hindrance." tOR

copyright 2005 Gary M. Galles

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