Even in Trying Times, July Fourth Is a Day for Optimism
The great principle of the Declaration of Independence — that all men are created equal — is as essential today as it was in 1776.
Still good.
Photographer: Robert Laberge/Getty Images
“Resolved,” said the Second Continental Congress, in 1777, “that the flag of the United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation.”
The resolution said nothing else. Precisely how those stars and stripes should be arranged wasn’t specified. In the years that followed, the flag would undergo 26 formal permutations, and many more metaphorical ones. Eventually its proportions would be standardized, its color shades regularized, and its sparkling field of stars expanded with each new state. Kids would pledge allegiance to it. Soldiers would die beneath it. Protesters would burn it.