It’s amazing that there should be a Flag Day, today is June 14. That’s in the United States. I don’t know of any other country in the (more or less) free world where such a day exists, although governments have many other ways to encourage pride and obedience in citizenship.
A flag can represent a group or an abstract idea. If it identifies a private party, such as a corporation or company, it is not liable. It is different if it represents a social group that some members are forced to be a member of. Apart from the party rulers and their preferences, the flag then represents an enforced identity and certain obligations of service. Nazi flags at official events or official flags in the old American South were examples. One person can despise this kind of flag.
Flag Day was proclaimed by progressive Woodrow Wilson in 1916, similar to the Pledge of Allegiance established in 1892 by Francis Bellamy, a socialist who preached that Jesus was. School children had long been required to salute the flag and say the pledge of allegiance: American exceptionalism, at least in the West. A few decades after Woodrow Wilson’s declaration, the Supreme Court fortunately ruled that the First Amendment prohibited American governments from imposing such laws of faith.
A flag attached to a place, usually a country’s flag, can also symbolize good. Many Americans view their flag that way. Woodrow Wilson believed that the Stars and Stripes stood for “liberty and justice.” His vision of liberal justice was apparently not shared by everyone, including victims of eugenics, which was first legalized under his presidency in New Jersey. The only way an official flag can represent everyone in an area is to represent a normal good, shared by everyone. The general view does not include victims of social discrimination or exploitation. According to liberal or classical liberalism, a national or local flag can only be respected if it symbolizes equal freedom.
We should not expect people who are being exploited or discriminated against by their government to worship their flag secretly. But many do, which points to what Bertrand de Jouvenel calls “the mystery of public listening” (see In power). Several theories have been proposed to solve this mystery, ranging from some type of practice (perhaps genetic) to government propaganda and resistance as a collective action problem.
The goal of equal freedom for all is not easy to achieve. In his own Why, Me, I’m Not A Ruler, James Buchanan expresses this ideal as hope and faith, even if we know since Adam Smith that an independent social order of equally free people can also result in general prosperity. Another danger is nationalism, which many territorial flags try to promote. On the other hand, too much diversity can exclude the possibility of common values that are necessary to maintain a free society. For example, consider two religious groups of people who respectively worship god A and god B, and believe that their god wants them to kill non-believers. The set of normal values can be an empty set, and equal freedom is impossible.
There is in America and many Western countries the memory, or the hope, of individual (and property) freedom, the only thing that can effectively prevent the ongoing conflict between people and their beliefs, preferences, and ways of life. Finding a national or local flag that clearly conveys this ideal is no easy task.
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