Category: Blogs

Is it a Grand Old Flag?

What is so grand about the Grand Old Flag?

 

Ah, summer camp

When I was 10 or so I used to attend Innisfee summer camp in Howell, MI. One of our outdoor activities was an exhausting game of capture the flag. Innisfree was a huge camp and featured what, in memory, was a huge front lawn, which was more mowed field. It was complete with a few massive trees and small hills which gave opposing team members great places to hide on the way to capture the opponent’s flag. Little regard was given the care of that flag. In fact, it was fully expected it would be dropped, stomped, muddied and maybe even torn. Such were the stakes of such a game.

Flags for games are fine. Pieces of cloth in no particular shape or material or quality. No man revered them and no country (save the imaginary land of We-gotta-beat-them-guys) fought over or for that fabric.

In the lifetime of nearly everyone alive today, a flag, the flag, represents many things to many people. First, a semantic distinction. A flag, as a thing, holds no meaning. The various people for whom that flag hold meaning assigned that meaning. It is projected. Upon inspection, it is a rectangular piece of cloth assembled from many pieces of cloth, each of a very particular color and shape. In the aggregate, it comes to hold meaning for many.

Betsy Ross, call your office

Nearly no one doesn’t know the cute story of Betsy Ross sewing the first flag. Libertarians are well familiar with the Gadsden Flag. Mary Anna Custis Lee, wife of General Robert E Lee, designed the flag for her husband’s headquarters. The arc of the stars was to represent the Arc of the Covenant (h/t Dissident Mama).

 

 

 

 

 

People have probably used flags for as long as they could walk, carve a stick and skin an animal. The Roman Legions had flags. The Samaritans had flags. Their flag was cool. A skull on a stick with a wind-sock style tail. In the High Middle Ages, Heraldic images signified which royalty the riff-raff belonged to.

 

Denmark has the oldest national flag still in use, the Dannebrog, which dates back to 1478.

 

The Netherlands’ flag, a tri-color flag, is the oldest of its kind and is traced back to Charlemagne.   Of Charlemagne, there is a fun yet unsubstantiated story that he preferred the rind of Brie over the center.

How a piece of cloth came to be as revered as a national flag holds much curiosity, for another day. An industry has been established in the manufacture and display of the US flag. It is nearly twice as wide as it is high, 1:1.9, and the measurements for the stripes and the field and the placement of the union are very specific. Additionally, the study of flags has earned its own name, vexillology. As a craft, flag making is as precise as crafts can get. There is no room for nuance or inspiration. As a piece of cloth, it is meticulously made. However, what lies beyond that fabric, the affairs of governments, is another matter.

I am a big, big fan of physical place in history. The Freedom Trail in Boston passes some our nations most famous, or infamous, churches and buildings and cemeteries. I love Boston. I found myself solemn in Princeton, New Jersey when I drove past what I learned later was the Princeton Battle Field.

I like early American history, and for all the errors and faults we can easily find these years on, I remain unapologetically in awe of the chutzpa it took to decide enough was enough and break ranks from England and establish independence. The bravery to discard the well known for the unknown dazzles me. Their fight for their liberty and ours, as stated in the preamble of the Constitution, “…secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity” is a point held by many that we ought to respect and, maybe, revere.

The sticky bits

Now the weeds. Flag desecration issues have been part and parcel of the United States since at least 1897. The current reverence we know is in large part to the 1942 Federal Flag Code which detailed much of our current flag custom. That law did not, however, address desecration at a federal level, but specifically left that to the states.  (the embedded link is to an article written by Murray Rothbard on the “flag flap”.)

In 1968, reacting to a flag burning in Central Park in protest to the Viet Nam War, Congress passed the Flag Protection Act, which was later struck down as unconstitutional and we’ve been going back and forth since.

Passions for the issue run high, hot, and deep. That is probably as it ought to be. Some people will maintain that the flag is but a piece of cloth and a country, as an idea, might be worthy of respect, but a thing is not. This country’s government has done unspeakable horrors in the name of that flag and revering that flag legitimizes the awful things done in to advance it. Detractors will say something about advancing liberty and democracy in the world, but I am reminded of a Paul McCartney lyric about things not being so.

I fly the flag. I fly the flag because I saw the tomb at the Princeton Battle Field where the bodies of both Continentals and British soldiers are buried. American and British sons are buried somewhere near the marker, both sides killing the other on January 3, 1777.

Division everywhere

That Americans hold such a divided opinion of the flag says something about what they are not being told by the government they stubbornly support. A picture of a Nazi flag fails always to stir emotion. I suspect if more Americans knew what was done in the name of their Stars and Stripes, they may think twice about being as lemmings.

My query into flags started innocently enough when I asked an An-Cap friend about his yellow and black flag on his FaceBook page. He told me that flags had meanings (I retorted they do not, we assign meanings) and that got me started. It seems we have started to round toward the factions of old. The Coat of Arms from a clan or a house showing to all who can see we be affiliated with them. Flags do have meanings. An-Cap flags, and Pride flags and Communist flags and the Confederate flag and ISIS flags and Nazi flags and Antifa flags and college football flags. The flag fliers are telling all who can see they are part of this or that faction. So it is with the US flag. Often enough, it isn’t what is being said that is relevant, but what is not being said that is the real message. When you see an An-Cap, or any other flag, inquire not why that flag, but why not the other. The answer might surprise and upset you.

This is the language of the Flag Protection Act.

Flag protection language

The text of the law reads:

  • (a)(1) Whoever knowingly mutilates, defaces, physically defiles, burns, maintains on the floor or ground, or tramples upon any flag of the United States shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for not more than one year, or both.
  • (2) This subsection does not prohibit any conduct consisting of the disposal of a flag when it has become worn or soiled.
  • (b) As used in this section, the term “flag of the United States” means any flag of the United States, or any part thereof, made of any substance, of any size, in a form that is commonly displayed.
  • (c) Nothing in this section shall be construed as indicating an intent on the part of Congress to deprive any State, territory, possession, or the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico of jurisdiction over any offense over which it would have jurisdiction in the absence of this section.
  • (d)(1) An appeal may be taken directly to the Supreme Court of the United States from any interlocutory or final judgment, decree, or order issued by a United States district court ruling upon the constitutionality of subsection (a).
  • (2) The Supreme Court shall, if it has not previously ruled on the question, accept jurisdiction over the appeal and advance on the docket and expedite to the greatest extent possible.

For this article I referenced information on

http://www.ushistory.org/betsy/more/desecration.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_Protection_Act

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_v._Johnson

 

 

 

 

 

Libertarians Like Control…But, of What?

“Libertarian…You keep using that word”.  That was my working title to the second part of my earlier blog piece, Libertarians Like Control. Here I work to answer, for me, what libertarianism is.  That is a giant topic with scores of answers and offers to those questions by some very heavy hitters: Hans Herman Hoppe, Walter Block, Murray Rothbard, Ludwig von Mises, and more.

Sharing what you know, your accumulated knowledge of your specialized skill, is a gift which rewards the giver almost more than the recipient. In the olden days of the 1970s and 80s, no chef worth his salt would share any more than was absolutely necessary (and necessary was always determined by the chef). The thinking seemed to be that if the chef gives away his knowledge, you’ll have it and he won’t, or at least, won’t be in a position of control over you.

Today we can look on such practices as silly. Of course giving of yourself, teaching, does make you stronger. Leo Buscaglia made a career out of teaching that you can try, but you cannot, give away all of your love. You always have more, but, when you give love, love is returned to you. So too cooking skills or people skills or life skills. The exchange isn’t always like for like, but this for that. We know this. Today we know this. Leadership has been focus grouped and written about and pondered over and, in I think measurably good ways, all that thinking has produced good results. When leadership is about helping the other people grow so they become better and pass that accumulated knowledge to the next person, that’s a win. When leadership is used to keep a person down, that’s politics, and then little good comes from that.

I will offer that libertarianism, and to a degree R and D, is what you make it. Clearly no libertarian is going to call for higher taxes and more military. But, inside the parameters of NAP (Non-aggression Principle) and property rights, there is a lot of room for one to be comfy.

The free flow of people in an organization has often been unsettling to me. How can a group of people, political, employment, or civic, identify as a group and then say here are the basic rules, as long as you don’t mess with them, go and be? A group, by my definition (not a gang) has an implied set of guidelines detailing admission to and sustained membership in that group. How does a group allow wiggle room inside those rules? The absence of structure used to give me the willies.

I am happy with the quest for freedom and liberty. The NAP makes sense. As a political conservative, that was alien. Conservatives conserve their last best sense of themselves and to do that, they will use force.

Defensive force is acceptable, and necessary, if your life is in the balance. Offensive force, not so much. To stop on person from hurting another, you will get hurt. Joseph Heller invented this scenario. It’s the idiocy of the cop who shoots the potential suicider. Don’t kill yourself or I’ll shoot.

I feel I’ve found a good fit in libertarians. There are many places, all those fluid rules, where a detailed knowledge is useful and needed. Knowledge of economics and specifically Austrian school economics, praxeology, history, Constitutional law, the Declaration of Independence and so many other areas for specific knowledge that even if one doesn’t have it, the journey of getting it is rewarding. I’ve encountered many a fellow traveller who is crazy smart and eager to share that knowledge.

Sharing knowledge, teaching, is illuminating. I didn’t realize how little I know of cooking until I had to teach it. Teaching is a humbling experience. Teaching exposes the vulnerability of the teacher as incomplete. No one knows all about everything, or anything. I became a better cook by teaching cooks. I am learning to be a better citizen by listening to smarter citizens.

I started this blog in part to share my food knowledge. I also started it to document for all to see my progress as a better citizen. The path for that is through libertarianism. In the simple form, it’s a smart, simple (simple doesn’t always mean easy in cooking or politics) guide for how to co-exist. Libertarian thinking shows me the best solutions to complicated problems which are only becoming more complicated.

I’m sharing my journey with you in part to make sure I have it right for me. When you make my muffin recipe, the reason the procedure is as it is is because it works. I’ve made them many times and those procedures produce the best results. I know that by doing. I am sharing my doing with you so we can both be better.

Better at baking is control of baking.  Libertarians aren’t unique in their want for control.  We want each to control himself.  As the anarchists say, No rulers, not no rules.  You control your life, your job, your family, your money.  Let each also do the same.