Tonight was the Boy Scout Court of Honor. We started, as always, with the flag ceremony. I've been saying the pledge of allegiance since I was a wee small girl, and most of the time I rattle it off without thinking. Tonight I was paying attention.
I thought about how the pledge is a promise -- a solemn promise to commit myself to something that's bigger than I am.
I thought about the people who have laid down their lives to advance the American flag: the men at Iwo Jima, the men lying dead at Arlington National Cemetery. I saw Arlington National Cemetery as a high school student and I was shocked by it, the neat rows of white tombstones stretching into the far distance. At the time it made me angry -- why did all these people have to die? -- but these days the answer to that question is clearer to me: they died because peace and freedom are dearly bought.
I thought about the republic for which that flag stands, and the gift of a free democratic society in which we can elect our own representatives -- and boot them out of office when they fail to do their jobs. I am thinking now about our slow and patient efforts to extend the franchise: the 15th Amendment, the 19th Amendment, the 26th Amendment.
I thought about what it means to be indivisible in this season of Calexit jokes and nationwide uproar. I thought about liberty, the privilege of choosing what you'll think and what you'll say and where you'll go and where (or whether) you'll worship. I thought about justice, the glorious promise that might (or riches) cannot make right, that the right of a matter is something true and abiding and worth fighting for. And I am thinking now with tears in my eyes about that incendiary last phrase:
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