The history of the American flag

It’s been burned. It’s been raised. It’s been waved.   This is the story of the American flag.

Transcript

00:00🎵Outro music plays🎵

00:30I think the U.S. has a really particular relationship with its flag, but there's a lot of research

00:38on the idea that in the U.S., exposure to the flag and the use of the flag does elicit

00:44emotional responses from individuals that often indicate increased patriotism or a sense

00:50of national belonging.

01:09Another sight in Philadelphia is Betsy Ross's house.

01:12She made the first United States flag.

01:13In her day, it had only 13 stars.

01:43Proudly we hail.

02:00For so proudly we hail.

02:01Oh man, I'm mixing it up.

02:13I think the U.S. does have what might some have called a cult of the flag.

02:25It does describe the strong feelings that Americans have towards the flag and the need

02:31to respect it, and you see that in part through the fact that the United States has a very

02:35strong and stringent code around how to respect the flag, how it's raised, how it's taken

02:40down, how it's, um, when it's given to fallen soldiers' families or other things.

02:58I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.

03:04It's called banal nationalism, is one of the terms theorists have used, that it's something

03:08that's day-to-day.

03:09You don't necessarily notice that a flag is flying in front of a school or in front of

03:13someone's house, or when you are saying the Pledge of Allegiance at school, that that

03:17was some way of inducing a kind of emotional, political response in you.

05:08These past weeks have given new meaning to those old words, and have only deepened our

05:15allegiance to our nation and to our flag.

05:28I see it with Antifa, they're constantly, yesterday they were burning it, Antifa.

05:35You burn the American flag, you go to jail for one year, it's very simple.

05:53The number of people who seem to be marching underneath United States flags appear to be

05:59rising in a really interesting way.

06:01These groups said, if we can show them that our ideas are very American, that they're

06:05native to the U.S. and to white Americans, they might be more willing to join us, and

06:10over time we can help them get over these hang-ups about terms like neo-Nazi or neo-fascist.

06:16And you saw a version of that in things like the siege of the Capitol, where people were

06:22saying that they're patriotic, but that they wanted to stop the electoral college, which

06:28is a basis of how the U.S. voting system works.