One of the silliest controversies of late has been the recent hyperventilation at the New York Times over the flags Justice Samuel Alito has flown over his properties. Many conservatives have rightly argued that this is the latest attempt by the left to delegitimize the conservative majority on the Supreme Court, but it is also about far more -- it’s an attempt to delegitimize the entire American founding.

For the uninitiated, the New York Times has run a series of reports about which flags the good Justice and his wife have flown over their properties. Mrs. Alito raised an upside-down American flag over their suburban Maryland residence amid a dispute with a neighbor. The Times linked the Alitos’ flag to the fact that a few January 6 rioters also flew our national emblem upside-down, signaling distress.

A reporter was then dispatched to the couple’s vacation home on the Jersey Shore to confirm that they had flown the “Appeal to Heaven” flag, a Revolutionary War naval ensign. Long accepted as a symbol of the American Founding and particularly popular in my native New England, the flag has been transformed into a culture war issue almost overnight. The Times has convinced its progressive readership that the ensign is a “provocative flag” and a symbol of the far right because some of the J6ers carried it as well. 

If this seems like a spurious attempt to link Justice Alito to the Capitol riot, that’s because it is. But it’s not the full story. The Left is also trying to alienate a good number of Americans from the iconography of their country’s founding.

Writing in Newsweek, Peter Roff asks “...There were people on Capitol Hill on January 6 carrying the American flag properly. Does that mean, according to the logic behind the Alito story, that Old Glory itself now represents ‘Stop the Steal’ as well?”

Well, yes, yes it does. Dobbs aside, the radical left would like us to associate Old Glory with the Right. The Stars and Stripes is itself a symbol of the American founding, and therefore must be replaced with the flag of the Viet Cong or Palestine or whatever revolutionaries the scions of the upper middle class are fetishizing these days. Associating our flag with the extreme of one political faction diminishes the esteem in which it is held by others.

This explains why the Left tripped over themselves to conform to the Times narrative. CNN proclaimed the “Appeal to Heaven” flag “controversial.” San Francisco City Hall has already dutifully removed the historic emblem from its plaza. In my beloved home state of Maine, where voters will decide this fall whether to revert to our old state flag that also has a pine tree on it, the largest paper frets that the Pine Tree State’s flag will get lumped in with the Revolutionary-era symbol. 

In a matter of days, the historic flag has become toxic to many Americans who would not otherwise associate with far-left politics. The radicals will not stop until they have done this to all the symbols of America’s civic religion.

And symbols matter. If celebrating the imagery of the Founding Fathers, or indeed of the country as a whole, is coded as far-right, it is no great leap to code any celebration of America as far-right. Patriotism itself can be made anathema to mainstream Americans who don’t wish to associate with that label, which in turn undermines support for liberty, democracy, and individual rights.

How should conservatives respond? At first, the Left ceding basic patriotism to the Right may seem a historic victory in the culture war, but it is a pyrrhic one. Conservatives may profit in the near run as some of the patriotic center will find themselves leaning Right in reaction to the Left’s assault on our cherished symbols. But just as many -- and perhaps more -- will follow the tastemakers to the anti-American far Left. 

Rather than assert ownership over these symbols in a way that alienates the center-left -- looking at you, Michael Knowles -- conservatives are better served fighting for their universality. Outside of San Francisco, the Right should make the case that other city halls ought to keep the “Appeal to Heaven” flag flying where it already is as a symbol of the freedoms for which our forebears fought, not an avatar of a contemporary political issue.

Some conservatives in Maine also oppose the effort to change back to the old state flag because it is somehow “woke.” They should instead rally behind it and make common cause with those center-left voters who don’t want a treasured symbol of our state lumped in with a flag the newspapers are telling them to avoid. 

Wherever the right can resist the temptation to politically code our national symbols and respectfully reinforce the notion that these flags -- and the country they represent -- belong to all of us, they should. The future of American patriotism may depend on it.

James Erwin is a Young Voices contributor who writes on free speech and tech policy. He lives in Washington, DC.

Image: E. Benjamin Andrews