Flag Day in the United States is often a holiday of honor and national pride, each day to figuratively” rally around the flag.” Flag Day have their origins in the Second Continental Congress. On June 14, 1777, the Congress adopted a flag design, specified as “That the flag of america be thirteen stripes, alternate white and red; how the union be thirteen stars, white within a blue field, representing a whole new Constellation.”
The main use of this design would have been to be the flag carried into battle (the brand new War was still being well under way). The flag was initially carried inside the Battle of Brandywine on September 11, 1777. In these early days of the us flag, it had been shown on naval ships and ultimately became accepted and honored with the new Usa citizens through foreigners too. In 1778 Captain Paul Jones commanded the naval warship “the Ranger” on which the flag was placed. Upon arriving inside a French port, the crew in the French naval ships saluted the flag.
The original design is credited to Betsy Ross, and possesses the familiar circle assortment of the 13 stars – for your original 13 colonies. Eventually since the country grew, the volume of stars had to grow at the same time. The subsequent version had 15 stars, as Vermont and Kentucky joined the Union. This new flag occurred in 1795. The flag went through numerous iterations as new states were put into the continent. However a problem was brewing over how the flag was being misused.
Before 1897 numerous opportunists took the nationalistic feelings drilled into the flag’s image as avenues to advertise their wares or political beliefs. The flag took over as backdrop to advertising and other questionable purposes. For example a marketer could post an add-on a flag and wave it around within a crowd.
An endeavor appeared to have federal legislation passed that could ban desecration in the flag. After failing with the federal level, Illinois, South Dakota, and Pennsylvania released state laws in 1897 that made it illegal to position any type of markings around the flag, to utilize the flag in any kind of marketing, as well as to mutilate, trample, deface, or defile the flag.
It wasn’t until 1968 that flag desecration became federal law. A flag was burned in Ny City’s Central Park to protest the Vietnam War. Congress then passed a brand new law which makes it illegal to knowingly cast contempt upon any flag of the United States by “publicly mutilating, defacing, defiling, burning or trampling upon it.”
This law has been challenged more often than not since. The hub of the problem is seeking the balance between flag desecration and freedom of speech rights. Inside a 1972 decision, the Supreme Court held that Massachusetts could not prosecute someone who wore a flag about the seat of his pants. In 1974 the Supreme Court decided that freedom of speech overrode flag desecration in the case involving somebody who affixed a peace sign over the flag in protest in the U.S. invasion of Cambodia.
Probably the thorniest issue of the latest times will be the utilisation of the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance. In 2002 a Ninth Circuit Federal appeals court decided that reciting the Pledge of Allegiance is unconstitutional as a result of line “one nation, under God.” In 2004, however, the Supreme Court declined to hear a similar case, thereby leaving the inclusion of “under God” intact in the Pledge of Allegiance for many of the country.
More info about north america go to this webpage.