by Preston Brashers
In George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984,”the authoritarian government had power over every aspect of people’s lives, especially their thoughts. To reshape minds, even history could be changed:
“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street and building has been renamed, every date has been altered,” Orwell wrote. “And that process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped.”
Similarly, in the dystopian minds of today’s authoritarian Left, it is a threat to the constitutional order and the rule of law that the Pine Tree Flag—a flag flown by George Washington during the American Revolution—was flown at the home of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito.
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According to the leftist, revisionist version of history, a flag that embodies the ideals of the American founding instead represents insurrection against the rightful American government.
In reality, the Pine Tree Flag represented the American colonists’ plea to the God of Heaven to be free from the bonds of a tyrant king. The supposedly controversial flag displays the motto “An Appeal to Heaven,” evoking the philosopher John Locke, whose ideas are woven into the Declaration of Independence.
The motto on the flag came from Locke, who wrote of an unchecked government authority that would “design, or go about to enslave, or destroy” the people. Locke wrote, “The people would have no other remedy in this, as in all other cases where they have no Judge on Earth, but to appeal to Heaven.”
What could better symbolize the weight of Alito’s oath to uphold the Constitution than a flag that points to God as the ultimate judge? It’s hardly a crime if Alito or his wife is inspired by Locke—few people in history have done more to advance democracy and constitutional government than that great English philosopher. The notion that a flag paying tribute to his ideas is anti-American or anti-democratic is laughable.
Locke was a major influence on Thomas Jefferson and an indispensable philosophical forefather of the Declaration of Independence. Consider the striking parallels between Locke’s writings and the famous second paragraph of our country’s founding document.
Knowing the Pine Tree Flag’s connection to Locke and to America’s founding, people who love America and believe in her founding principles should unabashedly fly the Pine Tree Flag along with the Stars and Stripes.
Many of those who are upset that a Supreme Court justice flew the Pine Tree Flag have a similar disdain for America’s founding and its history. They would rewrite the Constitution to cede our rights to the government, and they would rewrite American history to focus only on its flaws–both real and imagined.
America is worth preserving, and the ideas on which she was founded are worth remembering.
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Preston Brashers is a research fellow for tax policy in The Heritage Foundation’s Grover M. Hermann Center for the federal budget.
