As a history buff, the Betsy Ross flag has deep meaning to me.

It has come to symbolize a nation that embraced an idea. That idea was put forth in the Declaration of Independence and which all Americans should subscribe regardless of race, color, religion, etc. That idea was that government exists to serve the people and to protect our unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness not only from those outside our nation, but from the government itself.

People have died and fought for more than 200 years to try to bring about that original idea. We even fought among ourselves in a great civil war to advance the goals that were first established when we declared independence. Subsequent struggles have included the women’s suffrage movement and the Civil Rights movement of the 60s to name only two. But these important events are nothing more than the slow and relentless realization of that original idea, that all men and woman are equal and have equal rights. This is classical liberalism at its best.

Today, classical liberalism is under attack from old enemies including racism and new ones including progressive liberalism. We can only hope that rather than take down the Betsy Ross flag, that we display it proudly and remind people of what it stands for… a nation under God where its citizens have unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness…

The God “part” is important, since coming from God these rights are “unalienable”, they are not subject to “social compact”. If they derive from social compact, then they are subject to change by man and that is what is most scary about progressive liberalism since progressive liberalism dismisses the idea of individual rights for a new social compact based on relative truth.

That some would co-opt the flag to represent other “ideas” is natural, but to go along with that co-opting either by assigning the flag meanings it was never intended to represent is equally wrong.