Flag Day in the United States is really a holiday of honor and national pride, a day to figuratively” rally round the flag.” Flag Day have their origins within the Second Continental Congress. On June 14, 1777, the Congress adopted a flag design, specified as “That the flag of the us be thirteen stripes, alternate white and red; how the union be thirteen stars, white within a blue field, representing a fresh Constellation.”
The initial usage of this design was to function as the flag carried into battle (the Revolutionary War was still well arrived). The flag was carried in the Battle of Brandywine on September 11, 1777. Over these start of the us flag, it absolutely was displayed on naval ships and finally became accepted and honored from the new United states of america citizens and by foreign nationals too. In 1778 Captain Paul Jones commanded the naval warship “the Ranger” where the flag was placed. Upon arriving within a French port, the crew with the French naval ships saluted the flag.
The main design is credited to Betsy Ross, possesses the familiar circle array of the 13 stars – to the original 13 colonies. Eventually because USA flag grew, the number of stars had to grow as well. Another version had 15 stars, as Vermont and Kentucky joined the Union. This new flag came into being in 1795. The flag underwent numerous iterations as new states were combined with the country. However a concern was brewing over how the flag had been misused.
Just before 1897 a number of opportunists took the nationalistic feelings drilled into the flag’s image as avenues to promote their wares or political views. The flag became the backdrop to advertising and other questionable purposes. Like a marketer could post an add-on a flag and wave it around in a crowd.
An attempt appeared to acquire federal legislation passed that might ban desecration in the flag. After failing in the federal level, Illinois, South Dakota, and Pennsylvania announced state laws in 1897 that caused it to be illegal to set any type of markings around the flag, to make use of the flag in any sort of marketing, or mutilate, trample, deface, or defile the flag.
It was not until 1968 that flag desecration became federal law. A flag was burned in The big apple City’s Central Park to protest the Vietnam War. Congress then passed a new law making it illegal to knowingly cast contempt upon any flag of the usa by “publicly mutilating, defacing, defiling, burning or trampling on there.”
This law continues to be challenged often times since. At the heart in the issue is locating the balance between flag desecration and freedom of speech rights. Within a 1972 decision, the last Court held that Massachusetts could not prosecute an individual who wore a flag around the seat of his pants. In 1974 the last Court decided that freedom of speech overrode flag desecration within a case involving a person that affixed a peace sign in the flag in protest from the U.S. invasion of Cambodia.
Probably the thorniest issue of latest times will be the standby time with the words “under God” inside the Pledge of Allegiance. In 2002 a Ninth Circuit Federal appeals court decided that reciting the Pledge of Allegiance is unconstitutional due to the line “one nation, under God.” In 2004, however, the last Court declined to listen for a similar case, thereby leaving the inclusion of “under God” intact in the Pledge of Allegiance for some of the nation.
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