Independence Day is my favorite holiday of the year. Usually, it’s a time where our nation comes together and celebrates the breakaway from a tyrannical power and the founding of our nation. Like many people across the nation, I have highly mixed feelings about the holiday this year. Our government is acting, in many ways, like the tyrannical power we chose to separate from 249 years ago.
The founders of the nation listed 27 specific grievances in our Declaration of Independence, including some which ring pretty close to home today. The second paragraph of the document begins with the sentence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Eleven years later, the states came together to write a constitution for our your nation. The preamble to that document reads, “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
110 years after the founding of our nation, the Statue of Liberty was erected in New York City. Poet Emma Lazarus was commissioned to write a poem to help fundraise for the statue. At the time she was involved in work to aid refugees who were fleeing anti semitic persecution in eastern Europe and saw the horrific conditions they were forced to live in. Her poem, called The New Colossus, contained the phrase, “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” which has become synonymous with the United States and the Statue of Liberty in particular, over the ensuing century.
These three statements of the core of our nation’s values are still true today. All people are endowed with the rights stated in the Declaration of Independence, many Americans are striving to create the more perfect union described in the preamble to the Constitution, and many Americans want to welcome the oppressed, hungry, and downtrodden to our shores. There is also a large contingent in the country who is actively seeking to destroy these values.
Today, I fly the flags of all fifty states at my home. I do so because our nation is a union of many people. The flags of the fifty states represent the culture and individuality of their community. Some have roots in heraldry, some have native themes going back thousands of years. Some are simple designs and some are vastly complicated. Vexillologically speaking, some are designed well, and some are not. Some have designs which go back centuries and some are less than a decade old.
These flags are a picture of our nation, imperfect and striving to form that more perfect union mentioned in the preamble. Look at the reverse of the Seal of the United States on the left side of the one dollar bill. Notice that the pyramid is unfinished. There is still work to do and only we can do it!
The current flag of the United States and the first flag of the United States (Betsy Ross) are flying on the flag poles. The US flag was flown over the United States Capitol on May 14, 2000. The Betsy Ross flag belonged to John Alvis, the father of my flagpoles.
Cruesbreck Flags 