Dear Editor: 

I emigrated to the USA in 1978 to work as a mechanic and electrician in the Gulf of Mexico. Then came two children. Terrie and I did not want to raise the children in the south; there is too much negative cultural baggage. We moved to Maine in 1991 and have been here pretty much ever since, first in Alna and then in Newcastle. I became a newly minted U.S. citizen in 1998. 

This past eighteen months I think we have all been forced to reflect on what it means to be an American. Flag Day, which is integral to the concept of America, is almost upon us. We never had Flag Day in England where I grew up. 

I looked up the meaning of Flag Day and found this: “The flag serves as a powerful emblem of freedom, democratic ideals, and national pride. The iconic colors and design hold specific meanings: red for hardiness and valor, white for purity and innocence, and blue for vigilance, perseverance, and justice”. 

I cannot reconcile this with the bombs we supply to Israel, the support for genocide in Gaza, the flaunting of Congress to mount an illegal war in Iran, the unconstrained ICE assault on our immigrant neighbors, the detention centers where due process has been thrown out the window, and the canceling of Federal food support and healthcare for those most in need to fund tax breaks for the wealthiest. 

The supporters of these policies habitually wrap themselves in the flag. Levels of cruelty and injustice unimaginable even a few years ago are trumpeted as patriotic. Those that stand in protest are denounced as lunatics and traitors.  

This is not the America we moved to Maine to find, and which has sustained us these past thirty-five years.  

I have never been one to wave a flag, but it seems to me it is time to reclaim the Flag: for the America of empathy, of support for those in need, of respect for our immigrant neighbors, of ideals and defense of human rights, and of justice and the aspiration to ‘a more perfect union’ in spite of how poorly this has been implemented at times such as these since first articulated 250 years ago. 

Nigel Calder 

Newcastle