America Honored

July 4th – Independence Day for Americans, Saturday for the rest of the world – marked the end of three weeks spent honoring America:

Before we go back to dishonoring America, I want to share a few words in praise of prose about flags – specifically, in praise of presidential proclamations celebrating the American flag.¹

I've read the last 70 years of presidential Flag Day proclamations. They're brief and simple and often follow the same pattern. Usually, they open with the creation of the American flag in 1777. The Continental Congress resolved: "that the flag of the thirteen United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the Union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation."

After citing this in his proclamation, the president will list various sightings of the American flag:

Ronald Reagan²
when the British surrendered to General Washington at Yorktown
when our soldiers battled at Iwo Jima
when Admiral Peary reached the North Pole
the Marne
the Moon
on the side of the Space Shuttle Columbia as she circled the Earth

Bill Clinton
over smoky battlefields and peaceful demonstrations
the beaches of Normandy
the jungles of Vietnam
the deserts of Iraq and Somalia
the depths of Earth's oceans
the Sea of Tranquility on the Moon
in Oklahoma
on the sleeves of rescue workers
emergency personnel
volunteers
on the shoulders of those who each day risk their lives to protect the public safety
classrooms
statehouses
courtrooms
churches
from public buildings as a sign of our national community
on missions of exploration
on missions of mercy
wherever else Americans strive to express their precious freedoms in the face of adversity
wherever our questing spirits have been willing to venture

George W. Bush
over the debris of the World Trade Center
at the Pentagon
on cars
clothing
houses
hard hats
during the Opening Ceremonies of the Winter Olympic Games in Salt Lake City

Obama
on the podiums of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games
the banks of Baltimore's Inner Harbor
European trenches
Pacific islands
the deserts of Iraq
the mountains of Afghanistan
duty stations stretched around the globe
over the institutions that sustain our Nation at home and abroad
above monuments and memorials
beside the halls of government
capitol buildings
atop skyscrapers
over farmlands
town squares
our homes and storefronts
small-town storefronts
storefronts and homes³

And, of course, "over the land of the free and the home of the brave." To me, though, that's not just the borders of 50 states, 16 territories, and one federal district.

The (French) Marquis de Lafayette rejoiced at US victory in the Revolutionary War: "America is assured her independence; mankind's cause is won, and liberty is no longer homeless on earth." Lafayette was buried in a Paris cemetery, under American soil per his request, and an American flag has flown above his grave ever since (~180 years). If the US fell of the map, liberty would not be homeless on earth. It would still have a plot in Picpus Cemetery, or at least some space on a storefront.

<sub>1. I'll publish my review of The Vexillologist's Reader on another occasion.
2. In 1986, Reagan lets us know that "in recent years, citizen awareness, interest, and appreciation of the flag and its relationship to our American heritage have increased. More American families and businesses are buying and displaying the flag."
3. Obama is obsessed with storefronts.</sub>

You can read all the presidential proclamations at http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/proclamations.php.

Fly the Flag Modestly

This is a short one.

The fourteenth of June is Flag Day in the United States. On this day in 1777, the Second Continental Congress adopted Betsy Ross's homespun stars and stripes. Many other countries celebrate flag days, but America's is today. (Denmark's is tomorrow.)

Eddie Izzard has a good bit about flags. Here it is set to a Lego animation.

Symbols attract attention either to themselves or to what they represent. In one sense this is good. The invisible is difficult to understand without visible symbols. But the problem arises when the symbols start to take on a life of their own and outshine what they symbolize.

Numerals are just symbols for numbers, and language is comprised of symbols for thought. But sudoku is not high level mathematics, and sesquipedalianism is not intelligence. Ideally, we'd all follow the words of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein when we communicated: "Everything that can be thought at all can be thought clearly. Everything that can be said can be said clearly." In this way, symbols (read: words) would point directly to their parent thoughts. We discover this truth every time we get wrapped up in a book. The words on the page fall away, and we become part of the author's internal world.

But we love conspicuous symbols. Platinum credit cards, sports cars, big homes, and high fashion make us seem wealthy and powerful. Our own insecurities, shortcomings, and mounting debt are brushed under the rug.

This occurs on a larger scale, too. Skyscrapers make our cities seem more important, and they’re often built at great expense. But both the Empire State Building and the Burj Khalifa struggled to find tenants once completed. Magnificent as both buildings are, they overreached.

Dubai: the objectively greatest city in the world. Does your city have a taller building?

"Wealthy people and architects are stupid. I don't let my symbols run wild. In fact, I don't think I have any symbols." Facebook profiles are our own boastful PR. Emblazoned with the personal symbols of our own names, our Facebook profiles say only the best things about us. (Emos are still stuck on Myspace and LiveJournal.) There is no "dislike" button on Facebook for a reason. Activity must be overwhelmingly, if artificially, positive for the site to remain healthy. People don't become addicted to websites that insult them.

Modest symbols, ones that don't attract undue attention to themselves, tend to stand for the most powerful forces. Nazis don't get that. At the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, one Nazi mistakenly assumed the Holy Grail would look like the cup of a king. Here's what happened to him:

In fact, the grail was a simple, carpenter's cup.

Many people wear symbols all the time in the form of wedding rings. What kind of ring would a blue-collar laborer be able to buy his wife? Now, what kind of ring would an aging millionaire be able to buy his new, young wife? Which ring better represents love?

Ultimately, the best symbols are impossibly simple. Communion is just food and drink, but it's everything more. And any child can draw a cross, but the wisest sage can never fully understand what it means.

So, as far as symbols go, the American flag is all right. It has some meaning and isn't unduly flashy. It can make people think about the United States if it isn't completely overused. But, whether the flag attracts attention to itself or to the nation it represents, it's not about the symbol. What matters is what's behind the symbol.

Futurama is a source of great social commentary.