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Show By DAWN LAMBERT From flagpoles of ‘schools, public buildings and local. industries.—. and from the doorways of Ceritral Utah. homes — the American Flag will wave Tuesday. licallyNit will fly over a land deela: independett by our freedom-loving founding fathers 191 years ago this. Fourth’ of July. Old Glory is.a symbol of self-determined destiny won through a nation’s fight for independence from King George III and Great Britain. It was won by battles in the 1770’s signifying a self-made promise that North America — the United States of America — would build her own greatness by winning the right to build itself from a mold of its own ideals. This grandiose flag waves over what is today the oldest republic, the oldest democracy which lives under the oldest written constitution in the world. With a swift expansion of a comparative handful of people from the beginning, and growth of a few straggling colonies into the most powerful of nations, the flag became the symbol of America along with the eagle, the Capitol, Congress and the Su*preme Court. Below it our mountains are as majestic as kings’ palaces, our city commission meeting every bit as important ao mg Arthur's knights of the Round Table, and the conquest of the North America wilderness by brave pioneers as significant as the Roman conquest. Beneath the Stars and Stripes stand Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Benjamin Franklin, Walt Whitman, Robert Frost, Mark Twain and the common man. Itis raised over the Democratic and the Republican parties. As-a monumental salute to freedom, the Statue of Liberty standsas if to say to foreign ships, “Above me waves the American Flag and below meis a nation surviving and thriving in greatness because of a noble people. This same flag, allowing for additional ONL SUNDAY HERALD,JULY 2, 1967 stars added for the annexed states, was raised after the Revolutionary War and in the Spanish-. i Civil War, World War I, World War II, Korean and the Vietnam wars. It is a flag, which has draped the countless caskets of soldiers who died for a eountry of tradition and symbolism every bit as special as its mother country, Great Britain, It is a flag defended by those buried in the Arlington Cemetery and in every local cemetery in the United States. Our flag has witnessed manifest destiny — nationalism, industrialism, capitalism, science, religion, democracy and liberty that no other nation oan equal. It signifies freedom for minorities, educational opportunities, medicare, social security, a Texas drawl, football, baseball, hot dogs, mom's apple pie, dad’s root beer, Uncle Tom’s cabin;.and Francis Scott Key’s, “The Star Spangled. Banner.” All this stemsfrom an English settlement that began in April, 1607, when three stormbeaten ships of Captain Christopher Newport anchored near themouth of the Chesapeake Bay as a prelude to.the Revolutionary War, the flag, the Declaration of Independ- ence. Ali this come from George Washington, the Battle of Saratoga, yankees andrebels, the Constitution of the United States, buck: privates and four-star generals. From Maine to Orego, Rhode Island.to Texas, Florida to California, and from Alaska to Hawaii, the flag waves, seeming to dare communism,socialism, apathy, riots and demonstrations, war and graveyards to ever weather it out of existence. For under God this nation lives, And under men this country is ruled. All this exists beneath a freely waving red-white-and-blue bunting flag that flies because the Declaration of Independence was written by great yet humble Americans who proclaimed its resolution of equality and freedom on July 4, 1776 — 191 years ago. |