Connecticut Town Won’t Hoist ‘Thin Blue Line’ Flag for State Trooper, Lowers ‘Pride’ Flag to Half-Staff Instead
Jarrett Stepman /
Symbols matter.
The Left understands this. They understand that the symbols and statues on public display in a society can have profound meaning and shape the way people think about the world. These symbols and statues can represent something about our past or something that reflects the values that we hold as a society.
That should be the takeaway from a particularly illustrative news story from Wethersfield, Connecticut.
Wethersfield, population 27,300, was among many towns in Connecticut to pay tribute this week to state Trooper First Class Aaron Pelletier, who died after being stuck the afternoon of May 30 by a hit-and-run driver who allegedly was under the influence of drugs and alcohol.
The Wethersfield Town Council, which includes six Democrats and three Republicans, voted to turn down a request to fly a “Thin Blue Line” flag at the town hall. (After one of the GOP members moved to fly the pro-police flag, the vote failed 3-5, with one abstention.)
The flag looks like a standard American flag, but in black and white with a blue line running through the middle. The flag symbolizes how a small number of police officers represents a thin line of order to protect society from crime, violence, and chaos.
That’s the way I see it.
Why did the local lawmakers turn down this flag?
Now, if the policy was simply that town hall displays only the American and state flags, that would be one thing. But it turns out that’s not the case.
Let’s hear the reason from Emily Zambrello, one of the six Democrats on the nine-member Town Council.
In an interview with WTNH-TV, a local ABC affiliate, Zambrello was asked what she thinks the “Thin Blue Line” flag stands for.
“It represents racism and antagonism to many, many people,” she replied. “And even if you don’t personally believe that and you fly that at your own house and you think it means something to you that’s much more positive, it’s just not how many people feel about it.”
Zambrello concluded that flying the “Thin Blue Line” flag is “not appropriate” to raise over town hall and that local flag policy prohibits the council from putting up “anything associated with hate.”
If that didn’t enrage you enough, this story gets even worse.
The Town Council decided to keep up an LGBTQ “Pride” flag, but lowered to half-staff to “honor” Pelletier. From the video, this doesn’t appear to be just a standard rainbow flag, but the new, evolving flag you’ve probably seen that includes additions for the transgender movement and Black Lives Matter.
I’ll call this the “woke” flag for lack of a better description.
Frankly, I associate the woke flag with the chemical castration of children, riots and looting, and certainly hate. I’m sure there are more than a few people in Wethersfield who would agree.
So, why is it that this flag stays up at a state trooper’s funeral and the “Thin Blue Line” flag is prohibited?
Because the Left takes public displays very seriously.
They want to make sure that the symbols they’ve chosen to reflect the values of our brave new world reflect their vision of things. That vision can’t coexist with the older values our country was built upon. They’ve made that quite clear.
This tussle over the “Thin Blue Line” flag mirrors the debates over historical statues.
The Left has insisted on removing or demolishing statues that generally represent our past. Such statues have run the gamut from Robert E. Lee to Abraham Lincoln.
There’s been little discernment as far as the target goes. The Left finds America’s past to be shameful and hateful. Traditional values, whether about religion, family structure, or law and justice, are treated with outright scorn.
Most of the statues torn down in Democrat-run cities in the riots of 2020 haven’t been replaced. The vandals were rarely apprehended or punished.
But make a skid mark on a “Pride” flag placed on a street? You’ll be charged with a felony.
Marring any one of the symbols of the Left’s new regime comes with extreme consequences.
That’s because the Left seeks to fundamentally transform America as a means to secure power. Destruction of old heroes and the construction of new ones symbolizes one regime being torn down in favor of another. One set of values being replaced with another.
It’s not just the “Thin Blue Line” flag that the Left sees as hateful. They’ve already found ways to condemn other traditional flags as symbols of racism or insurrection. The Left would surely prefer that the woke flag replace them all, including the American flag.
Some would say it already has.
The nature of what we are and will be in America, and the West more broadly, is certainly in question. Nevertheless, I don’t think the old republic is wholly dead.
The woke flag may better symbolize the institutions and “our democracy,” as the Left calls it, but there are still many Americans who haven’t accepted the transition. Pun intended.
We’ve had plenty of signs in the past few years that at the very least the American people aren’t going to wholly give up the blessings of liberty bestowed by the patriots of 1776 and the brave boys of Pointe du Hoc just yet.
The result of the Left’s goal to morally transform our society have often been counterproductive and farcical. At times, they’ve been monstrously grotesque and their public displays of art often fittingly reflect that.
The symbols the Left has chosen to revere hinge on grievance and “pride” without honor. They don’t elevate. Instead, they flatten the distinctions between good and evil, failure and merit. They put victimhood and narcissism above courage and sacrifice.
If we want to “win” this country’s future, we must take the battle over symbols as seriously as the Left does—or else we’ll continue to live under the broken and distorted moral paradigm they’ve created.