the unflagging flagness of flag day

Flag Day. June 14. As a schoolkid, flags galore, a parade around the school. Then, in the Sixties, the flag was appropriated by the "America, love it or leave it" crowd, meaning the crowd that brooked no dissent, that wanted blind allegiance during an unpopular war, the crowd that seemed to say, "The flag means this and only this or else you are un-American and disloyal" and cue the music and the bromides and the jingoism. There were backlashes to all that, ranging from flag burning (which I opposed and still oppose and don't get, but still believe in freedom of speech even if I radically disagree with such speech or expressions of speech) to clothing of flag designs, on undies or kerchiefs or dresses or ties. One person's honoring the flag was seen as blasphemous by another, and vice versa. Then right after 9/11, we put a flag up on our house. Proudly, defiantly, gladly, collectively, sadly, yes, patriotically. Our hillside street on Tipperary Hill, in Syracuse, looked picture perfect with flags rippling at dawn or dusk. But should we have castigated a neighbor if they chose not to fly a flag? No, and we did not. But I myself felt it really was a time, like my childhood, when the flag was a true unifier, when it represented a huddling of a family under a protective shelter, a collective cloak of armor and quiet pride. That's just me. For some, it was a rallying symbol of jingoistic and simplistic revenge, or would-be revenge. I guess. I can't read minds. Today? I don't know. I think the right still likes to appropriate the flag for exclusionary and militant purposes. When I saw American flags waving in Berlin while Obama spoke or in Chicago when he won, I thought that maybe we were over with parochial possession of the flag's meaning. Don't get me wrong: it would be no counter-victory for broad-minded patriotism if the left seized the flag for its own agenda to the exclusion of others (not sure, really, how that would work). The flag is broad, its stripes sweep outward. Its stars are in a wide firmament, its colors are of multiple hues. May it stand for the values no one owns alone but that everyone embraces in a civil and free society (don't forget the civil in civilization).