The Battle Flag of the Republic
This will be an uncharacteristically short entry. No quotes or graphics, no historical examples. Just a solemn bit of venting into the ether.
I have a very special Flag. It’s an American Flag that hung on the wall of my martial arts gym for many years. I began every class with a salute to that Flag, and each time I did so, I did it with the intention of acknowledging that what I was about to teach had the capacity to help defend someone and save a life, or to harm. I did this so that I would always be certain and mindful to teach with the intent of saving people from harm, to protect the innocent from the malevolent. When I closed down my gym and joined the Army, my Flag went with me everywhere. It accompanied me on deployments, on training assignments, everywhere. It was my reminder of many of the same ideas as when it hung on the wall of the gym, only now, in uniform, my mindfulness about purpose and intent was far greater in scope. Later still, when I joined the Intelligence Community and my work took me to the far-flung corners of the world, my Flag was again with me. I picked up the habit of writing along the reinforced seam of the Flag all the countries it had visited with me. By the time I left any form of foreign service, the number had climbed to over 20 countries on five continents.
Another part of my life that has been elemental in who and what I am is volunteer service. For some 30 years now, I’ve gone to natural and humanitarian disasters and volunteered in all sorts of capacities to try and help those affected. In 2017, I began taking my Flag with me to these places as well. The 2017 hurricane season was particularly brutal and damaging, and the outpouring of support for the relief efforts I was involved in was unbelievable in its generosity and frequency. I began a new habit of commemorating the names of those who volunteered beside me, who donated, or who supported the efforts by writing them on the Flag. My Flag became a symbol for people in the disaster zones - look for the American Flag with all the names written on it and you’ll find help. Each time I went to a disaster, the names on my Flag increased in number. Each name was a reminder that, even when I went alone, there were many, many people supporting me, making lives better through their time, effort, and resources. As it had done on my gym wall or in my rucksack, my Flag was a reminder of my higher duty, my obligation as a man and as an American. It was my symbol that even in the worst of times and places, I would serve an ideal defined by generations of patriots before me.
My Flag has only ever flown in places where there was danger and suffering, or in the places one prepares to face danger and suffering. At home, during peacetime, it sits neatly folded in a place of honor. This too is symbolic. My Flag is a Battle Flag. It is the banner under which I fight in the ways I am able for what is right and just and proper. It is the banner under which I serve my fellow man and our higher ideals against the resistance of nature and of tyrants. More than a symbol of my Nation and my allegiance to it, my Flag is a reminder of my debt, my oath, and my obligation to stand firm against the forces that would see the innocent harmed and the liberated turned into subjects.
After the attempted assassination of former president Trump, after seeing the decline of civility, the weaponization of the Federal government toward the eradication of dissent, and the radicalization of the social and political fringes of my America over the past several years, I’m doing something I’ve never done. I’m doing it mindfully, purposefully, so that I can keep myself and my efforts true.
I am hanging my Flag at home.