As evidenced by royal wedding merchandise and World Cup shirts emblazoned with the United Kingdom’s Union Jack, national flags can be symbols of unity and pride. They also can be instruments of division and hatred. President Donald Trump announced the 2018 celebration of Flag Week just days after disinviting the Philadelphia Eagles from the White House and implying that they were “disrespectful” of the flag and national anthem.
The United States observes Flag Day on June 14 in commemoration of the June 14, 1777, adoption of the Stars and Stripes as the nation’s official flag. Flag Week, “the week in which June 14 falls,” and Honor America Days, “the 21 days from Flag Day through Independence Day,” are designated by Congress as special occasions to “display the flag” and honor the country. At this time of year and in this year in particular, when some Americans measure patriotism by the size and number of their flags, it is important to be mindful of the prescribed manner for displaying and showing respect for the flag.
Most Americans know that standing and placing “their right hand over the heart” is the proper way to demonstrate respect for the flag when it is being carried past, or being raised or lowered, but flag displays have been the cause of some controversy in our nation. What many ostensibly patriotic Americans do not know and, if known, do not obey, is that the federal law also prohibits using the flag “as wearing apparel, bedding, or drapery,” “embroidered on such articles as cushions or handkerchiefs and the like, printed or otherwise impressed on paper napkins or boxes or anything that is designed for temporary use and discard,” “for advertising purposes” or “as a costume or athletic uniform.” Since 1976 an exception has been made for lapel pins.
Many ostensibly patriotic Americans do not know and, if known, do not obey, that federal law prohibits using the flag “as wearing apparel, bedding, or drapery,” “embroidered on such articles as cushions or handkerchiefs" and more.
Thus, wearing a Stars and Stripes shirt, cap or tie and using an American-flag tablecloth and napkins at your Fourth of July party are, according to federal law, as disrespectful as kneeling during the national anthem. Flying the flag in bad weather and after sunset, unless illuminated, also is prohibited.
Laws cannot explain why home or auto owners who display flags 24/7, or purveyors and purchasers of flag merchandise that commercialize and desecrate our most honored symbol, are not vilified, but the Flag Code’s lack of enforcement provisions explains why they are not punished. As the Congressional Research Service notes, “The Flag Code is intended as a guide to be followed on a purely voluntary basis to insure proper respect for the flag.”
The Flag Code is not enforced because the First Amendment protects our right to use the flag for our own free speech purposes. The Constitution protects the right of politicians to wrap themselves in the flag (figuratively and literally) as clearly as it protects the right of protesters to burn or deface the flag.
The Flag Code was enacted in 1942 to protect the flag from unseemly and disrespectful conduct. Americans who respect the flag, “the Republic for which it stands” and the U.S. Constitution should know the law and follow it as their hearts and minds dictate, without casting aspersions on the patriotism of those who do not wear their flag on their shirtsleeves or front lawns or lapels.
I am glad the author came out against kneeling during the national anthem.
I’m sure you are. Your expressed views are nothing if not consistent.
Thank you. Consistently in support of African Americans. Consistently in support of a non chaotic immigration system. Consistently in support of economic opportunity for everyone. Consistently in support of the Catholic faith as taught for 2000 years. Consistently in support of good science. Consistently in support of the country's laws. Consistently in support of our military. Consistently in support of accurate history. Comsistenly against Fake News. Consistently in support of the truth.
Sure (eye roll). How is your consistency reflected in your reaction to a sitting so-called U.S. President saluting a North Korean officer?
Absolutely, all true. It's not like I don't post comments on these topics so you can't prove me wrong.
I’m sure you are. Your expressed views are nothing if not consistent.
Today someone posted a photo of a male in a t-shirt that read ‘I stand for the flag.’ This person was sitting in a park using a U.S. flag as a picnic blanket. It’s never been about patriotism. It’s about sanctioning public executions against African Americans.
How dare you infer that public executions against anyone are sanctioned by anyone. The Eighth Commandment is still operative.
James, the listener/reader infers; the writer/speaker implies. I did neither. None of those opposed to kneeling dates address the facts of what the participants are protesting. It’s called deflecting.
James, the listener/reader infers; the writer/speaker implies. I did neither. None of those opposed to kneeling dates address the facts of what the participants are protesting. It’s called deflecting.
The "facts" don't support your claim of "public execution" in the slightest. To claim that fatal police shootings are "public executions" is unsupportable. What's really bigoted on your part is label Americans as a whole, the entire country, as racists using the police to perpetuate the lynchings of blacks. My flag freed the slaves and finally exterminated the Jim Crow laws perpetuated by the successors of slaveholders. It was not just the Jews, the French, the Chinese, the Filipinos, and other foreigners saved by our flag: it was black people in our own country. To cherry-pick your outrage from isolated incidents is no less prejudiced and dehumanizing than any exercise of "white privilege."
Blacks are less likely to be shot by police than are whites in response to a police intervention/crime. The author and editors knows this. The protests are bogus. So are whites being publicly executed too? Is the real racism going on against whites?
I like the view of a veteran I know. He said he fought for people to have the right to protest in this country - including by kneeling during the national anthem. Protesting injustice is an honorable activity in this country.
For too many USA citizens the flag has become an “idol.” It is an icon, a symbol, of the freedoms that people in the United States constitutionally enjoy, in fact, even to refuse to honor it according to current cultural norms.
The irony for Catholics is that a genuflection is not a sign of disrespect but a sign of great respect. Inasmuch as the athletes who genuflect to the flag feel that its symbolism is being disrespected by USA police and correction authorities, as far as I am concerned, they are exercising the greatest possible respect to the flag. I refuse to allow a president or cultural norms to define for me what constitutes respect for the flag. That’s another freedom that the flag represents! This is not the imperial USA.
I am always suspicious of flag “wavers.” They tend to have very narrow definitions for others of what “freedom” means.
You mean patriotic Americans often define "freedom" too narrowly to include abortion? Can you amplify the "suspicions" by which you are accusing this group of infringing on others' freedoms?
I learned early in my teaching career that one of the freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution is freedom of religion. I had a student who was a Jehovah’s Witness who would not stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. I recall how many people who claimed that they were true blue Americans could not understand nor accept that the child had a right to remain sitting when they thought that, at least being respectful, she must stand. That simple example is what makes America great. Half the population of the world yearns for such a freedom.
How you conflate the abortion issue with a discussion of the denigration of those who exercise their freedom by genuflecting during the USA anthem baffles me. Stick to the topic at hand I would advise my students when they were writing.
I am an immigrant and over the years have owed allegiance to three flags. Each time I understood that the flag represents the virtuous principles of the nation, displaying man's intentions to be honorable. Why would anyone want to dishonor virtue?
Having a right to dishonor is only virtuous when that right is reserved and not displayed. Too often we become embroiled in arguments, for argument sake and then forsake truth, which is our real purpose.
Kneeling before the Flag poses a three-fold problem for American Catholics. First of all, kneeling is an attitude of honor and respect belonging—in our absence of hereditary royalty—exclusively to God. Second, the whole gesture is a muddle of deconstructed meaning because it is, in Western and other cultures, a sign of respect, but the NFL "anthem kneelers" redefined it specifically as a protest. Finally, in this odd re-framing of kneeling, it's also given explicitly as an indiscriminate and collective accusation of racism against our entire country: it treats Americans as a depersonalized culpable mass rather than as individuals; it is just as hostile, inhuman and depersonalized as racism, anti-Catholicism, or other forms of bigoty.
A flag is not an object to be worshiped. It is a symbol and it should not be made into an idol.
One hopes that it symbolizes good. In the case of the US, the "good" it is supposed to symbolize includes, among other things, the notion (a truly revolutionary idea at the time the words were written) that "all men are created equal". It is supposed to symbolize "equal justice for all". It is also supposed to symbolize the constitutional right to "freedom of speech".
When the country fails to live up to its own stated values, what does "respecting" the flag really mean?
Should it not mean that those who feel that the country is not living up to all of its values can draw attention to these failures by exercising their freedom of speech through symbolic action? Kneeling during the anthem is just such a symbolic action, and should be protected under the constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech.
I know of many veterans who do not agree that taking a "knee" is a sign of disrespecting them or their service. They believe that part of what they fought for are the values the flag is supposed to symbolize - including equality, justice ,and freedom of speech. Mr. Trump, who, one notes, managed not to serve during the Viet Nam war (too busy fighting his own Viet Nam he said, his personal defensive war against getting infected with an STD), would show real respect for what our military who fight and die for by dropping his war against a handful of football players and the NFL and announcing that those who kneel as a form of protest speech have a right to do so under out constitution.
Rather than purposely creating divisions over people exercising their right to free speech, it would be better if the President of this country worked to ensure greater justice for all - including for minorities. It would be better if ALL worked to alleviate the injustices too often faced by too many Americans, especially by African American males.
Wow! I'm surely glad that I have R-W-B napkins and that nobody's burning them.
35 years ago, I saw the biggest Old Glory I ever saw in my life a-waving in the breeze.
It was in Dallas.
No surprise.
It was flying over a Honda dealer.
No surprise.