On Flag Day, we need a unifying symbol more than ever

June 14 is Flag Day and the commemoration should remind us that we need a unifying symbol now more than ever.

The American flag design, with its 13 stripes and (originally) 13 stars, was adopted on June 14, 1777, expressly as a symbol of 13 disparate colonies unifying as one, under a banner that stood for the Declaration of Independence’s celebration of liberty and universal rights. That declaration and that flag, along with the national anthem written in 1814, always stood for the aspirational best in this nation. They asked us, and ask us still, to point above and beyond any current flaws or divisions, in celebration of unalienable rights with a sense of sacred honor.