Posted on 07/03/2023 5:47:59 AM PDT by DoodleBob
EASTLAKE, Ohio - Summer is the busiest season at Bill Quinn’s flag store on Vine Street as customers stock up on flags for July 4. In the flag business, Quinn says patriotic holidays like Independence Day, Veterans Day and Memorial Day are the equivalent of the days before Christmas for other shopkeepers.
“When you put up an American flag, you say I am an American and proud of it,” says Quinn, who got into the retail flag business after larger stores sold out of American flags after the 9/11 attacks.
Nowadays, Quinn’s 5,000 square-foot store in Eastlake has branched out into other kinds of flags, including those for sports teams, gardens, grand openings, and political candidates, including Joe Biden and Donald Trump.
While Democrats and Republicans might choose to fly the flag of their preferred presidential candidate, polling suggests a similarly partisan divide around the U.S. flag – a traditional source of unity in the American melting pot.
Republicans are somewhat more likely to buy American flags than Democrats, Quinn said, though both make purchases. He said Trump flags sell better than those for Biden and former President Barack Obama, but he keeps all in stock because he wants to cater to both sides.
Lake County, where Eastlake is located, has more registered Republicans than Democrats, although the vast majority of its more than 160,000 voters are unaffiliated. According to the Lake County Board of Elections, the county has 34,441 registered Republicans, 22,502 registered Democrats and 86 Libertarians, along with 103,579 voters who don’t identify with any party.
“The Trump people feel very patriotic,” he says. “They want America back to the way it was years and years ago. They want to clean the swamp. They want the people who they think are bad guys to be out. They strongly believe that America is a great country.”
Quinn’s observation that Republicans are somewhat more likely than Democrats to fly U.S. flags meshes with national research findings, including a 2022 YouGov survey of 1,000 U.S. adult citizens that found Republicans, white Americans, and older Americans are particularly likely to have a very positive view of the American flag.
Eighty-three percent of Republicans told the organization they have a “very positive” view of the flag, with 61 percent of independents and 49 percent of Democrats sharing that assessment.
A 2018 Pew Research Center poll found that 50% of Republicans and Republican-leaning voters described displaying the American flag as “very important” to being a good citizen, compared with 25% among Democrats.
Whether flag-flying is done by liberals or conservatives depends on the political context, such as what the U.S. government is doing, says University of Wisconsin political scientist Nathan Kalmoe, who has done research on the use of flag images in presidential elections. He says that orientation is led more by party leaders, instead of being an organic movement among ideological citizens.
“The surveys show that Republicans might be a little more likely to display the flag than Democrats, but lots of Democrats display the flag too, so seeing the flag flying at a neighbors house isn’t a reliable indicator of their partisanship or political views,” Kalmoe said in an email.
Widespread U.S. flag-flying really took off in northern states during Civil War, he said, at a time when Democrats were regarded as the “conservative” party compared to Republicans.
“Flag displays during the Civil War were certainly meant to show support for the U.S. government and the Lincoln Administration in their efforts to suppress the rebellion,” Kalmoe continued. “And Union Civil War veterans groups, who were disproportionately Republican, played a major role in continuing patriotic displays of the flag in the decades after the war.”
He says that in the short-term, people take cues about displaying the flag from leaders they trust, including political parties and civic organizations. But the use of the American flag by those leaders has a long and sometimes dark history.
The American flag has often been “appropriated by groups who advanced an exclusionary vision of an America reserved for white Christians to live and rule” and has also symbolized unpopular American global military interventions, he said.
“American groups attempting to overcome oppression by race and religion have sometimes displayed the flag prominently in hopes of winning more public support from dominant groups, even though the flag represents a country that treats them unequally,” Kalmoe added.
Peter Ansoff of the North American Vexillogical Association, whose members study flags, doesn’t believe the flag is particularly alligned with the right or the left, noting it is displayed at events on both sides of the political spectrum.
“I think it is fair to say that if you look back into history, the political right has been more exhibitionistic about their use of the flag,” says Ansoff, the organization’s past president. “They have tended to beat themselves on chest and say ‘Look how patriotic we are,’ more than the left does.”
During the Trump era, he noted an uptick in the use of the Gadsen flag by the extreme right. He says that flag, which depicts a coiled rattlesnake and the phrase “Don’t Tread On Me,” was created at the beginning of the Revolutionary War to be the personal standard of the U.S. Navy’s first commander-in-chief, Esek Hopkins. Continental Congress member Christopher Gadsden took a shine to it and presented it to the South Carolina assembly.
Ansoff said the “Stars and Stripes” flag also originated as a naval flag, and that Revolutionary War seamstress Betsy Ross probably had nothing to do with creating it. He said it was a modification of an earlier flag that was used to identify ships that came from the British colonies in America. That flag contained the 13 stripes in today’s flag, but had the British cross in the place where stars are currently located.
He said that Francis Hopkinson, a Continental Congress member from New Jersey who chaired its committee that oversaw the Navy, is most likely the person who decided to replace the flag’s British symbol with stars. He said Hopkinson formally sought reimbursement for his flag design services, but was denied because his colleagues thought it was part of his job.
Ansoff reports that in addition to happening during the Civil War, widespread civilian flag flying occurred during subsequent conflicts, such as the war between the United States and Mexico that began after the United States annexed Texas. Flag flying is actively promoted by veterans organizations, says Ansoff.
“They see themselves as keepers of the flame of American patriotism,” Ansoff says of the veterans.
Eastlake’s Quinn is one of those veterans. He learned to work commercial sewing machines while serving in the Air Force division that supplies parachutes and cargo nets. Before the 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, he already had a business that made giant American flags for display at auto dealerships.
When demand for Old Glory soared after the terrorist strike, he became the 21st Century’s answer to the legendary Betsy Ross, working around the clock to put the finishing touches on a bulk-sized box of unfinished regular-sized flags he’d previously purchased.
“They were gone as fast as I could make them,” Quinn recalls. “Everyone wanted flags. Some people didn’t have flag holders. You couldn’t buy them. I made them, too. They were easy to weld up. That’s how I started my flag store.”
Quinn says many of his customers – regardless of their political inclinations – fly flags at their homes to show appreciation for veterans in their family.
“It is a sign of honor and pride that we are Americans, and that goes for both conservative and liberal people,” says Quinn.
0bama made it ‘popular’ for dems to not show the flag as it might ‘offend’ someone
personally, i’d like to know who they are
Biden’s White House flew the fag flag in a superior position to the American flag.
One of the reasons they are pushing for DC Statehood is that it provides the perfect excuse to redesign the flag.
Funny that the most divisive people are the one’s who think showing the flag is divisive.
Is this a thing in any other modern country? Do the Japanese see there flag as divisive? The Belgians? The Swiss? The Swedes sew into bikinis for goodness sakes and nothing could be more unifying than that.
The FAR-LEFT Dung Beetles prefer to fly the “rainbow and unicorn” flags. It explains why they spend so much time on their knees.
Indeed
WE THE PEOPLE are not Fabians
This brings to mind an article from some time back wherein a liberal couple were interviewed about their cross-country vacation trip. Sometime during that conversation they mentioned that while driving through the South they were uncomfortable with all the US flags on display and especially uncomfortable when they saw the Confederate Battle flag flying.
IMHO there are far too many of these weak-minded idiots here in the USA. They spend much of their tepid lives seeking affirmation of their existence on FacePlant, Twitter, TikTok, etc. They are well on their way to being communist sheeple.
Adding a star is not “redesigning the flag”.
The last actual redesign of the US flag was in 1820, when the number of stripes was reduced back to 13, and the stars increased to 20.
A new star gets added on the first Independence Day after a state is admitted. That’s it.
Ahhh but you know what’s going to happen.
“Well if we’re going to have to get rid of the 50-star flag and replace it, why not just go ahead and redesign it so that it better reflects the country today.”
Then before you know it, they’ll ban the Stars and Stripes just like they did the Confederate Flag.
We’ve always flown our Flag since we bought our first house in 1973. It’s interesting to observe those who follow our lead when we’ve moved into the neighborhood. Some Republicans do, dems never do. Dems hate America.
No piece of cloth should be flown with the American Flag… it’s special.
Yup, I want to spit when I see or hear that behavior.
The last actual redesign of the US flag was in 1820, when the number of stripes was reduced back to 13,
The LBQT etc. flag now has so many stripes they are running out of colors.
the stated goal of the left is to destroy the ‘evil capitalist country’ and build their ‘socialist utopia’ on top of it.
read my bio page... i’ve been against their bs since i can remember.
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