Seeing a fair number of American flags, several Trump/Pence signs (but no Susan Collins signs) and an occasional Black Live Matter placard as we meandered home from mid-coast Maine today, made me choose a 1957 4-cent American flag stamp as today’s #stampoftheday. (It won out over a 1956 stamp featuring Independence Hall and 1950 stamp honoring the centennial of the Indiana Territory, which incorporated present-day Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and parts of Michigan and Minnesota.)

In particular, I recalled a conversation I had with a friend after a spate of American flags began appearing after 9/11. Both of us grew up in the late 60s and early 70s when the American flag was used as a cudgel against those people protesting the fact that America was not living up to its stated ideals, not only when it came to Blacks, Hispanics, women and other marginalize groups but also in our foreign dealings, particularly in Vietnam (and Cambodia .. and Laos…and Chile…and many other places as well) So we came of age with negative association to those who displayed the flag. I argued at the time – and still believe – that those of us who value/respect/treasure the best of what is America can be, need to claim (or reclaim) the flag as a powerful symbol of our aspirations. He was more skeptical and, unfortunately, in the early 2000s, the right wing successfully claimed the flag in service of its hyper-partisan, militaristic and authoritarian agenda.

We are at another of those moments in time when demagogues are again trying to wrap themselves in the flag ,proving yet again, Samuel Johnson was right when he said that “patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.”

So I again want to claim (or reclaim) the flag as our own. In doing so, I don’t want to be a Pollyanna about what I think the flag could be. Instead, I am trying to hew to the course that Frederick Douglass set in a famous speech given on July 4, 1852. (The speech just was the subject of a powerful retelling by some of his ancestors on NPR).

While the whole speech is worth rereading, I found a few paragraphs to be particularly powerful. Douglass opened by saying: “Fellow Citizens, I am not wanting in respect for the fathers of this republic. The signers of the Declaration of Independence were brave men. They were great men, too, great enough to give frame to a great age. It does not often happen to a nation to raise, at one time, such a number of truly great men. The point from which I am compelled to view them is not, certainly, the most favorable; and yet I cannot contemplate their great deeds with less than admiration. They were statesmen, patriots and heroes, and for the good they did, and the principles they contended for, I will unite with you to honor their memory….

But, he continued “The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth [of] July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn.”

Later, he noted: “What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy.”

Douglass eloquently and powerfully expanded on these themes. But then, as he began to bring his remarks to a close, Douglass pivoted again and said “notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented, of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country. There are forces in operation which must inevitably work the downfall of slavery….I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope. While drawing encouragement from “the Declaration of Independence,” the great principles it contains, and the genius of American Institutions, my spirit is also cheered by the obvious tendencies of the age,” which, he said, were slowly but inexorably working to bring an end to slavery. He concluded by quoting the “fervent aspirations” of abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, who wrote:

“God speed the year of jubilee
The wide world o’er!
When from their galling chains set free,
Th’ oppress’d shall vilely bend the knee,
And wear the yoke of tyranny
Like brutes no more.
That year will come, and freedom’s reign,
To man his plundered rights again
Restore.

…Until that year, day, hour, arrive,
With head, and heart, and hand I’ll strive,
To break the rod, and rend the gyve,
The spoiler of his prey deprive —
So witness Heaven!
And never from my chosen post,
Whate’er the peril or the cost,
Be driven.”

Be well, “be driven,” stay safe, fight for justice and work for peace.