“A big, sandy-haired man held his daughter on his shoulders, showing her the Statue of Liberty. I would never know what this statue meant to others, she had always been an ugly joke for me. And the American flag was flying from the top of the ship, above my head. I had seen the French flag drive the French into the most unspeakable frenzies, I had seen the flag which was nominally mine used to dignify the vilest purposes: now I would never, as long as I lived, know what other saw when they saw a flag.”

“The 101st was trucked to Utah Beach on July 10, seeing from the land what they had seen from the air the night of June 5: hundreds of ships sitting off shore as far as the eye could see. Smaller boats, LSTs, LCMs and other craft carrying men and supplies plied the waters between the ships and the sand. “It took your breath away,” he recalled. Winters saw something else he had not seen for more than a month, a sight that literally brought tears to his eyes: the American flag. In 2003, the memory still left him choked up. “I didn’t realize how much the American flag meant to me,” he said.”

“Whatever the truth about the Deliverer, she will remain in my mind as she was shown on that statue, and all the other statues and murals, songs and stories: riding, at the head of her own swift cavalry, with a growing migration behind her and a decadent, vulnerable, defenceless and rich continent ahead; and, floating bravely above her head and above her army, the black flag on which nothing is written.”

“However, displayed right alongside all the Confederate flag paraphernalia is a bunch of American flag merch – American flag place mats, patriotic “body crystals,” flag stickers you attach to your skin. Personally, I’m small-minded and literal enough that I see the two symbols as contradictory, especially in a time of war. But I fear that the consumer who buys a Confederate flag coffee cup, which she will then put on her American flag place mat, is the sort of sophisticated thinker who is open-minded enough that she is capable of hating blacks and Arabs at the same time.”

“Each day the sun would rise and set, the flag would be raised and lowered. Each Sunday I would have a date with my dead friend’s girl. I had no idea what I was doing or what I was going to do.”

“I don’t judge others. I say if you feel good with what you’re doing, let your freak flag fly.”