The contested cloth: When the national flag becomes the emblem of a tyrannical regime

“ For more than 200 years, the American flag has occupied a unique position as the symbol of our Nation, a uniqueness that justifies a governmental prohibition against flag burning in the way respondent Johnson did here. ”

“ This may be seen in Fig. 90, the noblest flag that flies under heaven.
Though the National Flag is primarily just so much silk or bunting, its design and colouring are full of meaning: and though its prime cost may be but a few shillings, its value is priceless, for the national honour is enwrapped in its folds, and the history of centuries is figured in the symbolism of its devices. It represents to us all that patriotism means. It is the flag of freedom and of the greatest empire that the world has ever known. ”

“ Some may be deformed by labor, dwarfed by hunger, broken in spirit, victims of tyranny and caste,—in whose sad faces may be read the touching record of a weary life; and yet their children, born of liberty and love, will be symmetrical and fair, intelligent and free.
That flag is the emblem of a supreme will—of a Nation's power. Beneath its folds the weakest must be protected and the strongest must obey. It shields and canopies alike the loftiest mansion and the rudest hut. That flag was given to the air in the Revolution's darkest days. ”

“ Flag of the free heart's hope and home,
By angel hands to valor given!
Thy stars have lit the welkin dome,
And all thy hues were born in heaven.
Forever float that standard sheet!
Where breathes the foe but falls before us,
With Freedom's soil beneath our feet,
And Freedom's banner streaming o'er us! ”

“ What true American can regard his own national symbol without emotion, love, and veneration! Whether he beholds it unfurled upon the battle-field, upon the ocean, or in a foreign land, he reads in every star and every stripe a history of his native land—of her struggles, her glories, and her future destiny. Under its shadow the soldier is a braver man, the statesman a better patriot, the citizen a truer loyalist, and the American traveller in foreign lands more proud of his nationality. ”

“ Certainly, but it is your good fortune to be able to identify yourselves with the cause of your people, of your fighting forces, of your government; and when you see the symbol of American sovereignty, the Stars and Stripes, you are perhaps not naïvely patriotic enough that your heart beats with pride in your throat and that you break into loud hurrahs, but you look upon this emblem with a feeling of home, with sympathy and confidence, with calm pride and heartfelt hopes, while we——. ”

“ The American flag? The Stars and Stripes? The flag which floats over every hellhole of mine and mill and prison? The flag which floats over station house and barracks whence issue police and soldiers to batter down and murder workers exercising their constitutional rights of free speech and free assemblage? Honor the flag which you, our masters, have changed from a flag of liberty into a symbol of the cruelest exploitation and vilest oppression of the new civilization? ”

“ American citizens bear in their breasts too much of the spirit of other and trying days, and have lived too long amid the blessings of liberty, to submit to oppression from any quarter; and the man who having once been free, could tamely submit to tyranny, was fit to be a slave. ”

“ We loved our banner while it waved
An emblem of our Union,
The fiercest danger we had braved
To guard that sweet communion.
But when it proved that “stripes” alone
Were for our sunny South,
And all the “stars” in triumph shone
Above the chilly North—
Then, not till then, our voices rose
In one tumultuous wave—
[Pg 178] We WILL the tyranny oppose,
Or find a bloody grave!
Another flag shall lead our hosts
To battle on the plain,
The “rebels” will defy your boasts,
And prove your sneering vain! ”

“ The spread eagle must fold his foolish wings and be less of a peacock; must keep his wings to carry the thunderbolt when he is commanded. We must realize our rhetoric and our rituals. Our national flag [531] is not affecting, as it should be, because it does not represent the population of the United States, but some Baltimore or Chicago or Cincinnati or Philadelphia caucus; not union or justice, but selfishness and cunning. If we never put on the liberty-cap until we were freemen by love and self-denial, the liberty-cap would mean something. ”

“ Drawing inspiration from the revolutionary and fertile teachings of Islam, they began the unrelenting yet fruitful struggle of raising the level of ideological awareness and revolutionary consciousness of the Muslim people. The despotic regime which had begun the suppression of the Islamic movement with barbaric attacks on the Faydiyyah Madrasah, Tehran University, and all other active centers of revolution, in an effort to evade the revolutionary anger of the people, resorted to the most savage and brutal measures. ”

“ Islamic Government The plan of the Islamic government as proposed by Imam Khumayni at the height of the period of repression and strangulation practiced by the despotic regime, produced a new specific, and streamline motive for the Muslim people, opening up before them the true path of Islamic ideological struggle, and giving greater intensity to the struggle of militant and committed Muslims both within the country and abroad. ”

“ Iran is Switzerland
Flag: three equal horizontal bands of green (top) , white, and red; the national emblem (a stylized representation of the word Allah) in red is centered in the white band; ALLAH AKBAR (God is Great) in white Arabic script is repeated 11 times along the bottom edge of the green band and 11 times along the top edge of the red band
Economy ———-
Economic overview: Iran's economy is a mixture of central planning, state ownership of oil and other large enterprises, village agriculture, and small-scale private trading and service ventures. ”

“ This is the history for which our flag stands; and when the young citizen salutes the flag, he should think of the great ideals which it represents. The flag stands for democracy, for liberty under the law; it stands for heroic courage and self-reliance, for equality of opportunity, for self-sacrifice and the cause of humanity; it stands for free public education, [Pg 114] and for peace among all nations. When you salute the flag, you should resolve that your own life will be dedicated to these ideals. ”

“ White is for purity, red for valor, blue for justice; and altogether, bunting, stripes, stars, and colors blazing in the sky, make the flag of our country to be cherished by all our hearts, to be upheld by all our hands. ”

“ Go where we may, at home or abroad,—on the sea or on the land,—wherever we find one of our citizens, standing beneath the broad folds of our national flag, we shall see his eye kindle and his bosom throb, as he gazes on the proud emblem floating above him: and if, at such a moment, violence be offered, either rightfully or wrongfully, to him or to it, his arm is nerved for the defence with tenfold vigor and strength! ”

“ The impulse which led you to leave the land of your birth and establish homes in the new world, was that love of Freedom and faith in Humanity which is the soul of the great Declaration. Thousands of men of your race and blood have fought and suffered and died for the flag of this Republic. ”

“ There is the national flag. He must be cold indeed who can look upon its folds, rippling in the breeze, without pride of country. If he be in a foreign land, the flag is companionship and country itself, with all its endearments. Its highest beauty is in what it symbolizes. It is because it represents all, that all gaze at it with delight and reverence.
It is a piece of bunting lifted in the air; but it speaks sublimely, and every part has a voice. Its stripes of alternate red and white proclaim the original union of thirteen States to maintain the Declaration of Independence. ”

“ Her sons were strong of arm and bold of heart, and with a dauntless spirit they broke the shackles of tyranny and erected in the wilderness an altar to fair Liberty, that all men might worship according to the dictates of their own conscience. They took the blue of heaven and the white of the milkyway and bound them with the rays of the sun, and made the American flag; and when they placed that banner in the sky, it became the flag of liberty, and carried to every shore and into every clime the message of freedom and human progress. ”

“ To every shore.
The world at last will join
To aid thy grand design,
Dear Liberty!
To Russia's frozen lands
The generous flame expands:
On Afric's burning sands
Shall man be free!
In this our western world
Be Freedom's flag unfurl'd
Through all its shores!
[Pg 101] May no destructive blast
Our heaven of joy o'ercast,
May Freedom's fabric last
While time endures.
If e'er her cause require!—
Should tyrants e'er aspire
To aim their stroke,
May no proud despot daunt—
Should he his standard plant,
Freedom will never want
Her hearts of oak! ”

“ Cultivate the spirit of admiration toward the national flag. Dowered with priceless traditions its stars and stripes speak of the sufferings of the past, the prosperity of the present, and the glories of the future which shall attend the onward march of this great Republic. ”

“ Our example can do much. The magnetism of our national flag will be felt wherever it floats; individual citizens may labor faithfully; but all these will be quickened incalculably by a system of conduct, on the [170] part of our Government, at home and abroad, which, while avoiding all improper interference with other countries, and teaching the beauty of honesty, shall show a prompt and benevolent sympathy with those vital principles without which our Republic is but a name. ”

“ Will the volume unfold she to freedom assign'd,
Till tyrants are chased from the sight of mankind.
Since the day we declared, they were masters no more,
The day we arose from the colony station,
Has England attack'd us, by sea and by shore,
In war by the sword, as in peace by vexation;
[Pg 299] Impressment they claim'd, till our seamen, ashamed,
Grew sick of our flag, that against the old hag
Of Britain, no longer their freedom protected
But left them, like slaves, to be lash'd and corrected. ”

“ Even the nation, especially in times of war—or at least, its significant classes—considers that it derives its authority and its purpose from the idea of the State. Nation and State are scarcely differentiated, and the concrete, practical, apparent facts are sunk in the symbol. We reverence not our country but the flag. We may criticize ever so severely our country, but we are disrespectful to the flag at our peril. It is the flag and the uniform that make men’s heart beat high and fill them with noble emotions, not the thought of and pious hopes for America as a free and enlightened nation. ”

“ There is but a step between the besieged and death, and as all hope of raising the siege is abandoned, the rebel flag is hauled down, and a white flag of submission waves in its stead. Pulaski falls, and the day is ours. The hope of Georgia is gone. In vain did the citizens of Savannah offer a prize of one hundred thousand dollars for the relief of the fort. Had that sum been increased to a million, it would have been quite as unavailing. The same inevitable doom awaits all the other forts and intrenchments of the rebel confederacy. ”

“ And we strip from our flag every recusant star.
They have forced us to stand by our own Constitution,
To defend our lov’d homesteads, our altars and fires,
While they tamely submit to a tyrant’s pollution,
Beneath whose foul tread their own freedom expires.
Then up with the banner, its broad stripes wide flowing—
’Tis the emblem of Liberty—flag of the free;
Let it wave us to triumph, and every heart glowing,
Nerve each arm’s bravest blow for its lov’d Tennessee. ”

“ We are a band of brothers and native to the soil
Fighting for the property We gain'd by honest toil
And when our rights were threatened, the cry rose near and far
Hurrah for the Bonnie Blue Flag that bears a single star! ”

“ The Wrath of the People The publication of an outrageous article meant to malign the revered 'ulama' and in particular Imam Khumayni on 7 Jan 1978 by the ruling regime accelerated the revolutionary movement and caused an outburst of popular outrage across the country. The regime attempted to quiet the heat of the people's anger by drowning the protest and uprising in blood, but the bloodshed only quickened the pulse rate of the Revolution. ”

“ Woman in the Constitution Through the creation of Islamic social infrastructures, all the elements of humanity that served the multifaceted foreign exploitation shall regain their true identity and human rights. As a part of this process, it is only natural that women should benefit from a particularly large augmentation of their rights, because of the greater oppression that they suffered under the old regime. The family is the fundamental unit of society and the main center for the growth and edification of human being. ”

“ Does not the voice come to us, through the din of war, the shrieks of hatred, the wailings of despair, through the churning up of the unspeakable filth which has been accumulating for ages in the bottom of this nationalism,—the voice which cries to our soul, that the tower of national selfishness, which goes by the name of patriotism, which has raised its banner of treason against heaven, must totter and fall with a crash, weighed down by its own bulk, its flag kissing the dust, its light extinguished? My brothers, when the red light of conflagration sends up its crackle of laughter to the stars, keep your faith upon those stars and not upon the fire of destruction. ”

“ A nation’s patriotic history is solely the history of its wars, that is, of the State in its health and glorious functioning. So in responding to the appeal of the flag, we are responding to the appeal of the State, to the symbol of the herd organized as an offensive and defensive body, conscious of its prowess and its mystical herd strength. ”

“ Is checked by no danger, is stayed by no fear,
Though mighty thy foes are, and urgent thy need,
We charge thee, look upward! we bid thee Godspeed!
On, on! thou brave champion of liberty's cause;
Unfurl Freedom's flag; blot out Tyranny's laws;
"God and the right!" be thy constant war-cry,
Till Oppression's hold ceases, and Slavery die. ”