Reflections on Flags and “Flag Day”

It’s strange that there should be a Flag Day, and today is June 14th. That’s in the United States. I know of no other country in the (more or less) free world where such a day exists, although governments have many other ways to encourage national pride and obedience.

A flag can represent a group or an abstract ideal. If it identifies a private group, such as an association or a company, it is harmless. It is different when it represents a public group of which some members are forced to belong. Except for the leaders of the group and their favorites, the flag then represents a forced identity and some service obligations. Nazi flags at official events or official flags in the old American South were examples. An individualist would despise these kinds of flags.

It was Flag Day proclaimed by the progressive Woodrow Wilson in 1916a bit like the Pledge of Allegiance was invented in 1892 by Francis Bellamy, a socialist who preached that Jesus was too. Schoolchildren have long been required to salute the flag and recite the Pledge of Allegiance: American exceptionalism, at least in the Western world. A few decades after Woodrow Wilson’s proclamation, the Supreme Court fortunately ruled that the First Amendment prohibited American governments from imposing such creeds.

A flag attached to an area, usually a national flag, can also symbolize an ideal. Many Americans look at their flag this way. Woodrow Wilson believed that the Stars and Stripes represented “freedom and justice.” His view of freedom from justice was clearly not shared by everyone, including the victims of eugenics, which was first legislated under his governorship in New Jersey. The only way an official flag can be truly representative of everyone in an area is by representing a country Ordinary ideal, divided by everyone. A common ideal necessarily excludes victims of public discrimination or exploitation. From a libertarian or classical liberal perspective, a national or territorial flag can only be respectable if it symbolizes an ideal of equal freedom.

We should not expect people exploited or discriminated against by their government to sheepishly worship the latter’s flag. But many do, pointing to what Bertrand de Jouvenel called “the mystery of civil obedience” (see his On power). A number of hypotheses have been proposed to solve this mystery, from a species habit (probably genetic) to government propaganda and resistance as a collective action problem.

The ideal of equal freedom for all is not easy to achieve. In his Why I’m not a conservative eitherJames Buchanan presents this ideal as a hope and a faith, even though we have known since Adam Smith that a self-regulated social order of equally free individuals is possible and conducive to general prosperity. One danger is nationalism, which is what most territorial flags are trying to promote. At the other extreme, too much diversity can preclude the possibility of common values ​​necessary for sustaining a liberal society. For example, imagine two religious subsets of individuals who worship god A and god B, respectively, and believe that their god wants them to kill unbelievers. The set of common values ​​would be the null set and equal freedom would be impossible.

There is in America and in many Western countries a memory of, or hope for, the ideal of individual freedom (and property), which alone can efficiently prevent a constant clash between individuals and their beliefs, preferences and lifestyles. Finding a national or territorial flag that unequivocally conveys this ideal is not an easy quest.

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