Yesterday was Flag Day, when we commemorate the June 14, 1777 adoption of our nation’s standard. For me, the American Flag is a symbol of our highest aspirations of freedom and justice; life, liberty, and the rights to the fruits of our labors; and ultimately, our unquestionable equal worth as human beings created by God. When I proudly display the flag, these are the principles I am celebrating. Every morning my spirit is lifted a little higher out of the dull grogginess of sleep by the sight of the flag that flies, visible from my kitchen window, just across the road. Were I to set out into a new frontier, even to the furthest reaches of space, it would be the Stars and Stripes that I carried. In my eyes Old Glory represents the best aspirations of mankind; as a symbol, it is surpassed only by the old rugged cross.
The flag is not Obama’s insidious socialist hatred of America. It is not Bush’s foolhardy wars. It is not Clinton’s nepotism, nor any of the other failures of her people. Political usurpation, blind nationalistic destruction, the military-industrial complex, social engineering and violation of our individual rights, all of these things stand in stark contradiction to the very symbol of freedom which they hide behind. The American Flag is our symbol of an ideal society, just as Christ is the example of an ideal life. And while we can never live up to such lofty ideals, we can proudly hold them up and do our best.
O! say can you see by the dawn’s early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming,
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there;
O! say does that star-spangled banner yet wave,
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
On the shore dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines in the stream:
’Tis the star-spangled banner, O! long may it wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion,
A home and a country, should leave us no more?
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps’ pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave,
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
O! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war’s desolation.
Blest with vict’ry and peace, may the Heav’n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: “In God is our trust;”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
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All poetry aside, the American Flag is bad-ass. I wear it with attitude. I'll go to my grave with it etched upon my skin, beer and gun in hand, with a shit eatin' grin on my face. And for no other reason than I really like it, here's a picture of Ke$ha, in all her glittery glory, expressing it for me:
God bless all who seek life.
God bless all who seek liberty.
God bless you, me, and Ke$ha.
God bless America.
