Our flag belongs to every American, not just the president | Steve Collins

I can’t help loving our flag. We have one hanging outside our house alongside enough patriotic bunting to make it clear we’re red, white and true blue. I’ve had a fair number of friends tell me that the flag is now just a piece of cloth, a symbol not of freedom but of corruption, aggression and foolishness. Some of them see divisiveness and betrayal in Old Glory. I understand what they’re saying. After all, the White House these days is festooned with flags but has so little clue about what this country is all about that [it argues America is based on the nativism](https://www.nationhoodlab.org/trump-says-america-was-founded-not-as-an-idea-but-on-the-character-of-anglo-saxon-settlers-americans-disagree-by-nearly-9-to-1/) of blood and soil rather than the ideals set down by Thomas Jefferson in Philadelphia 250 years ago. I get a little queasy, too, seeing huge trucks with MAGA stickers racing around with American flags flapping behind their air-conditioned cabins. And yet. Advertisement I grew up in a military family. We spent a lot of time on Air Force bases and Army forts where taking down the flag at the end of the day was such a big deal that bugles blew and traffic stopped to honor that carefully lowered piece of fluttering cloth. Why such a big deal? Because the flag represents so much: our shared history, principles and hopes. We handle it with reverence because it carries a meaning so deep that we routinely drape it over the coffins of veterans who die and fly it beside government buildings. Last week, my family gathered at a national cemetery on Cape Cod to lay my mother to rest, one more little stone in a vast green expanse created to honor those who served our nation. We drove past rows of flags, the one thing that symbolized what all those men and women had sacrificed for. Every one of them knew what it meant to serve the United States under that flag. There’s something powerful in that. Advertisement I know that some Americans see the flag as a tool for Trump or other oppressors. For me, it’s a source of pride that transcends political disagreements. I’m not going to let right-wing agitators claim the flag as their own. Despite their hateful agenda, the flag stands for the proposition that we adopted in the Declaration of Independence: that all men are equal and that our country embraces “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” That we fall short sometimes is obvious. But the principles that put our country on a course of independence have also flourished, not always for everyone but for more and more people over time as we struggle to turn a promise into reality. As usual, Jefferson said it best, in [the last letter he wrote](https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/declara/rcwltr.html), just before the nation’s 50th birthday in 1826. He said the Declaration he penned was a “signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government.” Our new nation, he wrote, “restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion.” I fly the flag because I believe this land still has the capacity to deliver a better world, not just to our own people but to all people. Someday. Copy the Story Link [](https://www.pressherald.com/author/steve-collins) [Steve CollinsColumnist](https://www.pressherald.com/author/steve-collins) Steve Collins became an opinion columnist for the Maine Trust for Local News in April of 2025. A journalist since 1987, Steve has worked for daily newspapers in New York, Connecticut and Maine and served. [More by Steve Collins](https://www.pressherald.com/author/steve-collins)