The usual idiots obsessing over flags regardless of ideology should remember that its not about the fragments of cloth themselves, it's "the republic for which it stands", if you want to get into the promissory element of an oath taken to its allegiance.
A flag can be a symbol, but also function as icon, and/or index with multiple functions in its communication process.
A flag can function as an icon (think icon Russian Orthodox) like this:
A flag can function as an index (think of "if there's smoke, there's fire") like this:
This set of multiple possibilities for the meaning/message of flag decorum and decoration is of little comfort to those who have staked entire institutions at a variety of levels to wage conflict on its behalf. OTOH civil disobedience at the symbolic level of the flag in many ways cancels itself out by legitimating the meaning of an anachronistic icon as a media representation made even more contentious with its use by murderers.
And of course in the US, at the state level, Seventeen states have flag pledges. Two include vows to die for their flag.
So wackadoodles like Bryan Fischer have been working on their tortured ahistorical logic as projection and false consciousness.
This is not a Republican issue. They didn’t invent the flag. They didn’t design the flag. They didn’t fly the flag. They didn’t march behind the flag. They didn’t got to war with this flag at the head of their troops. This is a Democratic issue. The Democrats are the ones that are responsible for the existence of the Confederate flag. My counsel to Republicans is hey, this is a Democratic issue. This is a Democrat symbol. This was invented by Democrats. It was flown by Democrats
http://www.politicususa.com/...
The meaning and message of flags in constituted by how they are situated and their associated discourse about what they represent. That so many people constrain and restrict those meanings, limited by ideological mystification and bias only make the task of organic interpretation more contentious in a democratic republic.
So many false flag equivalences, so little time. It's about signs, not signage.