On November 4th Byron Cain told us about "The American Flag: Facts You Never Knew." True to his word we learned that we were among the first countries to adopt a national flag which the Continental Congress did on June 14, 1777. Over the years 4 Congressional acts and 2 presidential orders affected the "Stars and Stripes." Thirteen stripes became permanent in 1799, but configuration of the stars on the blue field was not established until President William Taft entered an executive order.
Byron briefly digressed with a bit of history on "The Stars and Bars", a Confederate symbol now banned at NASCAR races. It was only a flag of the Army of Tennessee which gained popularity around 1902 around the same time that Confederate monuments were being erected throughout the South. It becomes quite understandable why these symbols of "white supremacy" in the depths of "Jim Crow" laws are anathema to our Black fellow citizens.
 
As a point of information your writer notes that the US Supreme Court held that "flag burning" is protected by the 1st Amendment. However I would observe that Justice John Paul Stevens, a veteran of Iwo Jima, dissented and refused to find that "freedom of speech" was so broad as to include desecrating the symbol of our country for which he fought and for which so many of his fellows died.
 
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