The Tattered and Faded Flags of Constitutional Democracy
This is a philosophical writing on the state of American empire and the current descent from constitutional democracy into Socialist/Marxist imperialism.
In contemplating a world desperate for change I stare at the American flag at my home all faded and tattered. I come to the realization that my shoddy Gadsden flag is emblematic of the nation that it represents. America, a nation embroiled in cheapness and low-quality obscurity that no longer stands for what it claims to represent, sold me a flag that the government hates. It is a flag listed by the FBI as a signal for “violent extremism.”
The tattered flag waves in the breeze as its cheap material slowly falls apart awaiting its ultimate destruction. The weakness of its manufacture is evident in where it came from and how it was made. It was mass-produced in a foreign land and was all that I could afford in the land of my birth.
Even in a sun-soaked morning the flag is obnoxiously unattractive and has not lasted as long as I would have expected. The ugliness of a relatively new flag and its quick deterioration does not compare to the high-caliber quality of an old flag that has never been flown. Perhaps the flag is folded in a triangle in remembrance of a fallen soldier, yet it is never flown as it is put under glass. Those flags sit and collect dust, while new flags made in foreign facilities are flown, waiting to get bleached in the sun when they fly over someone’s house. One has to question: if it were made long ago in America, would it still bleach, fade, and tatter?
As time causes people and things to wither away into the abyss, so does the quality of a nation which has withered away into absurdity and obscurity. Like a tattered and faded flag every day it gets closer to the abyss of time. The empire becomes a tattered and faded page in a history book, or to express modernity, an internet webpage that nobody reads due to its dullness. In other words, it becomes a boring and documented moment in time of how society used to “carry on.” Every second the flag flaps in the wind, the nation, like the flag, becomes weaker and more frail, until one day it is replaced by something better or worse.
Analogously, the war heroes that fought to build the empire get weak, frail, and die as their war-stories get old and over-told. Post-Modern citizens of the current empire view the stories as dull and apathetic. The stories like the men who told them become forgotten as the empire that created them changes into something else. The citizenry ask perilous and realistic questions like: what does America and its empire stand for now? These questions create discontent as the purposelessness of a faded idealism comes to realization.
A global empire of consumerism disguised as democracy with imperialism disguised as foreign policy takes the place of greatness. The Republic and its Constitution become meaningless. When you see the empire for what it actually is, the idealistic notion of what it is supposed to be is lost. Lawlessness and mob justice reign supreme when you don’t actually follow the supreme law of the land and not following the law, I.E. the Constitution, becomes the new societal norm and aristocracy becomes the acceptable double standard.
The ideologies the war-heroes fought against take the place of what the law was supposed to uphold. The Supreme Law of the Land becomes the supreme outdated ideology of the empire. Like cheaply foreign-made flags the quality of the empire and its laws become Mores or taboos meant to be bent or broken. Therefore, just like the cheap flag, the once righteous empire disintegrates due to its own weariness and lack of austerity.
In the last World War American heroes fought against fascism, Nazism, and imperialism, unfortunately now, we have become all of those abhorrent ideologies. The combined consumerist corporatism and covert militarism is a disguise in itself; a disguise of what brave men died to prevent. The unconstitutionality of the disguise’s implementation was foreshadowed by the Cold War and the War on Terror as fear once again became a tool of 21st century authoritarians. The same nation that helped defeat the Nazis unknowingly became the Nazis themselves.
In the United States of today, what few war-heroes are left alive weep at what we have become; Communism, Neo-Nazism, fascism, Marxism and Imperialism are all unrighteous yet acceptable alternatives to Constitutional democracy. The Republic is in peril.
We let people use free speech to advocate for these ideologies while we call constitutional traditionalists terrorists. We appreciate everything except what our forefathers built and what our war-heroes died to uphold. We metaphorically spit on their graves every time we disregard the Constitution as a failed ideology instead of law that should be upheld in court.
We the people, and the free peoples of the world, have to realize how important the tattered and faded flags of democracy are to the momentary human civilization for which we reside. Our lives are not meaningless and we are not animals or slaves like the materialist philosophies would have us believe. We were given laws, philosophies, and unalienable rights granted to us by a higher power and until we realize this we will become tattered and faded like the flags that represent us. Unlike the ones behind glass, that were never meant to be flown.