A MEMBER OF the Australian group, SydneyTrads, writes:

In his comments about the Union Flag, namely “who would want to be associated with that” given the United Kingdom is a “dead island,” Paul T makes a typical mistake – typical of those who don’t understand what that flag means.

While the grandchildren of the Yankee Revolution may see the Union Flag as a particularly negative symbol, for obvious historical reasons (if regrettable or mistaken), to Anglo patriots the world over the flag represents or symbilises the affinity between all peoples who trace their lineage (whether ethnically or culturally) to the root of Anglospheric civilization.

The Union Flag is, to put it perhaps crudely, a pictorial representation of a family name. It signals origins and the wealth that comes from those origins; and that wealth can be found in the dynamism of Anglospheric nations the globe over. To denounce it is to denounce one’s antecedents; ironically for self styled traditionalists who think the Union Flag is passé or embarrassing, that is an attitude and way of thinking which distinguishes the revolutionary leftist.

If we are to reject the identitarian importance, significance or relevance of the Union Flag for the global Anglo-Saxon Diaspora on the grounds that the United Kingdom itself is a “dead island”, I await for Paul T to denounce his own Stars and Stripes for the same reasons. After all, a nation that elects Obama (twice!) can hardly be called alive, or even remotely healthy.

Consider: the United Kingdom could be inundated in a communist revolution, or disappear in a puff of radioactive smoke, or worse still, become a republic, tomorrow. None of this impinges one bit on the meaning of the Union Flag. Its majesty and dignity may be missing from the actual, existing political order; there may not even be an historic Great Britain left; but the meaning of the flag resides in its history, its heritage, and yes, its myth – and this is something that unites us all as one super-extended family.

This is the flag under which all our settler nation’s Founding Fathers toiled. Defaming or belittling it should be a cause of offence to us all; yes, even the grandsons of the Yankee Revolution. Indeed, the flag should take on additional importance in light of the psychic genocide being perpetrated against us and our people by cultural Marxist elites. Those elites don’t care that your fathers bit their thumbs at “George” in the eighteenth century; they care to dispossess you of your homeland because of who and what you are. They have largely succeeded. Think about that before you talk of “dead islands” again.

The Union Flag is a reminder of something that grates our enemies: a proud people secure in its identity as a people. That is the reason why the left hates it, and that is the reason why we should embrace and defend it. All of us. That means you too, Paul, because in the greater scheme of things, you’re part of the family.

— Comments —

Buck writes:

I’m going to assume that the member of the Australian group, is Australian, and refer to him as the Aussie. I need clarification on the matters discussed as Yankee, Union, Anglo and Anglospheric. Multiple upper and lower Canadian rebellions and revolts were in a long mix of revolutions. I assume that’s all ended, except for the French/British thing. Which one is more represented by the Maple Leaf?

I’ll say this: I was born in Virginia, with the blood of Jefferson Davis in my veins. My father’s mother was his niece. I don’t fly a confederate flag, nor do I resent the number of stars not removed from the Union flag during our American Civil War, or our War Between the States, which ever started first. Flags mean what they mean to those who fly them, to those who create them, and to those who hate them.

They are symbols. They mean what we think that they mean.

I served in uniform. I’m angered at any abuse of my flag. I still feel that it is “my” flag. I honor and respect it for what it stood for. I fly a small Stars and Stripes and I display a large one that was folded and presented by an honor guard, next to a photo and a set of dog tags. They both represent a history. One symbolizes an orphaned pride and patriotism, the other a soldier dead and buried.

They are both, symbols of the past. No flag pole or carrying pole bears a standard that will lead the historical American nation back from the dead.

The anonymous Aussie says that he waits for Paul T. to denounce the Stars and Stripes in the same way that Paul has denounced the Union Jack. Impatient, he does it himself: “a nation that elects Obama (twice!) can hardly be called alive, or even remotely healthy.”

If the historical America is as dead as the Aussie says, which it is, then surely Great Britain, and all of the historical, now near-mythological “Anglospheric nations the globe over” are just as dead. A nation is one people, one language, one culture, defined borders, a shared heritage, and a shared identity; as the Aussie says: “a proud people secure in its identity as a people.” The Aussie, like most out of habit, misuses “nation”, even as he defines it. There is no American nation, no English nation, no British nation. Is there, by definition, an Australian nation?

“Marxist elites” have “succeeded” in “dispossessing” us. That’s true. The country belongs to anyone and everyone now. Just get here and grab you a flag. Make it mean whatever you want it to mean. That’s the American way.

Henry McCulloch writes:

Your Australian correspondent — I’ll call him Sydney Trad, instead of Buck’s “Aussie” — makes good points in response to Paul T’s saying the problem with the old Canadian flag is that it includes the Union Flag, now the banner of the “Dead Island.” I should add to Sydney Trad’s response that it’s worth remembering that pre-1965 Great Britain was a lot less dead than today. I agree with Sydney Trad: the Union Flag is the closest thing the English-speaking world has to a common symbol. Sydney Trad’s point that the greater British heritage the Union Flag represents remains worth commemorating even if today’s reality falls far short of the ideal – as indeed it does – is well taken. Paul T. also offers the criticism that “a continuing attachment to the old national ensign is now one of the badges of aging reactionaries.” A good reason to love it, I say!

Contra Buck, traditional symbols do not mean only what we think they mean. The Crucifix is laden with the most profound meaning of all, and its meaning is entirely independent of the thoughts of one who looks upon it. I’m not drawing a blasphemous equivalence between the Crucifix and any flag, only noting that each — at its level — is a symbol full of its own meaning.

When all Western traditions are under attack, most savagely from within, surely it’s good for English-speaking Westerners to be reminded of our shared heritage. (Though I would say that with greater conviction if the great crimes of Henry VIII and John Knox and the rest had not happened, and could be reversed. But the national crosses that make up the Union Flag, and the ancient symbols on the Canadian Red Ensign, predate the Protestant deformation.)

As Catholics, how can we not acknowledge the importance and the power of symbols? I fear Buck’s view of them, in his frustration at the current rot in America, Australia and elsewhere, veers toward nominalism. No need to go there. Things are what they are, not only what we say they are.

Joe A. writes:

My forefathers included Patriots, one killed on his own damned farm at the Battle of Freeman’s Farm, and Loyalists – United Empire Loyalists – whose mothers, fathers, and siblings died on their forced march to Upper Canada.

Had they known how it would all turn out, I’m not sure but they might have just cut a deal with George and saved all the trouble.

Jan. 29, 2015

Sydney Trads responds:

The proposition that the U.S. Stars and Stripes “means what we want it to mean” is nominalism of the worst sort. Presumably, the flag’s “meaning” predated Buck’s military service, indeed predated Buck himself. A people’s myth points to its possible future. It symbolises a link between the dead and the as-yet unborn. The Union Flag is an early link in the chain that harks back to the days of the first settlers of the New World who flew it proudly: it represented their peoplehood, and one which the present generation of Americans is but the most recent incarnation. At the very least, that flag is a symbol of historical significants that nurtures the earliest memory of the pioneers who shaped your nation.

A national flag of the kind under discussion here, as pointed out earlier, signals origins, an ancestral inheritance, and all that goes with it. Such a device can be contrasted violent with the hollow sterility of, for example, the present Canadian maple flag, or the synthetic spiritless ‘flags’ that our Republican Movement keeps trying to force on our nation here in Australia. The dismissive attitude of US patriots towards the Union Flag is understandable on historical grounds, but if one has something more than a shallow understanding of identity and peoplehood, a flag (whether the Union Flag or the Stars and Stripes) cannot be subject to an almost whimsical subjectivist valuation.

Furthermore, the suggestion that Paul T denounce the U.S. flag on the grounds that your nation has elected its anti-President on no less than two occasions was to illustrate that (a) it is no less “dead” than the “dead island” itself and (b) that that is no reason to disdain your flag, and by extension, the British one either. In other words, it was not a denunciation of either flags because a national symbol represents far more than merely the present socio-political order.

Laura writes:

For readers who do not know what “nominalism” is, it is the view that there are no universals or essences but reality is instead determined by mere names.

Buck writes:

We live in a modern liberal symbol-over-substance world, where words are routinely assigned whatever “meaning” an ignorant or dishonest user claims for them, and they are routinely adopted by “conservatives”, even nominal traditionalist conservatives. Is the pope the pope? Is the depiction of the symbol of a fish on a Japanese Shinto fisherman’s boat his secret signal to Christians? Is Obama an American? Is the current Stars and Stripes still the American flag? Is the essence of America, the essence of today’s modern liberal United States?

Which Canadians want which flag? Why? A majority didn’t care.

I make the case repeatedly here and wherever I am able to (to overwhelmingly deaf ears), that the lie and strategic misuse and theft of a host of modern liberal terms and concepts; like the hugely successful tactics of substituting “gay” for homosexual or sodomite, substituting the various fabrications of “genders” to lie about what is nothing more than homosexual sex, the mindless misusing of “man” and “woman” when it’s only the biological male and female, the common lie that the United States is a nation, etc..

A nominalist is a nihilist. I’m neither.

What, for instance, did a crucifixion or a cross symbolize before the crucifixion of Jesus Christ? Was it’s essence the same before and after? Was it’s essence known to the pre-Christian conquering Romans who used it as a tool of terror, or known to the countless subjugated victims who cringed in fear at the sight of it? Does the cross remain a symbol of torture and public humiliation?

When millions of illegals and tens of millions U.S. citizens see the Stars and Stripes, it means nothing to them. Its essence resides only in those who perceive it and know it, or in those that discover it. How might they discover it? There are ways, but there is no will.

What is the essence of the new Canadian Maple Leaf flag? Nothingness?

If a particular people are brain-dead or no longer exist, but a symbol of those long-dead people remains, where is their essence? In the symbol or with the people?

Paul T. writes:

Henry McCulloch quotes my remark that “a continuing attachment to the old national ensign is now one of the badges of aging reactionaries” and replies with laudable spirit, “A good reason to love it, I say!”. My observation-in-passing was meant lightly, as I certainly fit any definition of ‘aging reactionary’. But practically speaking, some causes are just stone cold dead, and someone who urges a return to the Red Ensign identifies himself as just a bit of a crank, like someone in, say, 1871 stubbornly declaiming “the South shall rise again!” Not every battle is worth fighting.

Mr. McCulloch writes:

I have two reactions to subsequent comments by Buck and Paul T.

Buck writes:

What, for instance, did a crucifixion or a cross symbolize before the crucifixion of Jesus Christ? Was its essence the same before and after? Was its essence known to the pre-Christian conquering Romans who used it as a tool of terror, or known to the countless subjugated victims who cringed in fear at the sight of it? Does the cross remain a symbol of torture and public humiliation?

I suspect the cross — before the Crucifixion, Resurrection and expansion of Christianity in the Roman Empire — was known as a scaffold for a particularly painful and degrading execution, and nothing more. But I didn’t mention a simple cross as a symbol, I mentioned the Crucifix. The cross-as-Crucifix did not exist before the Crucifixion and Resurrection, so the symbolism I wrote of did not exist before the redemptive sacrifice that gives the Crucifix meaning. The Crucifix is a depiction of torture and public humiliation, of what the cross meant to pagan Roman citizens and subjects; more importantly it is also the symbol of Christian faith in our redemption.

Paul T. writes about the Canadian Red Ensign now superseded by the rootless maple leaf flag:

Practically speaking, some causes are just stone cold dead, and someone who urges a return to the Red Ensign identifies himself as just a bit of a crank, like someone in, say, 1871 stubbornly declaiming “the South shall rise again!” Not every battle is worth fighting.

True, and I’m sure that old ensign won’t be Canada’s national banner again. But may a Canadian still fly it on his own property, even if he is just a bit of a crank? Has such as thing been forbidden? An American may fly the Confederate Battle Flag or even the flag of the Confederacy (two different flags) – subject to liberals’ opprobrium and at risk of shunning by people cowed by the PC crowd. In the United States I think flying the Battle Flag would be considered First Amendment-protected free speech. Canada has no First Amendment, as those who dare protest homosexualism and criticize Islam learn to their cost.

Buck writes:

Mr. McCulloch writes: “But I didn’t mention a simple cross as a symbol, I mentioned the Crucifix”.

But, I didn’t mention the Crucifix, I mentioned the cross.

My comment was about what a cross symbolized before and after Jesus Christ. I used it as one of several examples of positive, negative or meaningless symbols, in our discussion about our flags, depending on one’s perception. I wasn’t reacting to what Mr. McCulloch said.

My simple point was that there had been thousands crucified on crosses by multiple cultures over hundreds of years prior to the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ. The image of Jesus Christ on a cross then came to symbolize something profoundly different. It was a hundred years after the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, that the Crucifix was created by adding the corpus of Jesus Christ to a cross.

Paul T. writes:

In answer to Mr. McCulloch, at this writing I know of nothing to prevent a Canadian from flying the Red Ensign on his own property, but as nothing surprises me anymore, there may indeed come a day in the not-too-distant when some imaginative lawyer or bureaucrat succeeds in having this quiet expression of dissent classified as ‘hate’. Perhaps Pierre Trudeau’s son Justin, who wants the PMship so bad he can taste it, has someone working on it right now. :-)