The Flag We Still Share
Driving through Minnesota towns and suburbs this June, one sees signs of excitement for America’s 250th birthday.
American flags are everywhere: private homes, commercial buildings, and public buildings.
A careful eye will spot that this year, in Minnesota, that unity does not extend to the state flag. The state adopted a new flag in 2024. The old flag, centered on the state seal, had long been criticized as cluttered and as carrying painful symbolism because of its image of a farmer plowing while a Native American rides away. The new flag is simple: blue fields and a white North Star.
The new state flag has not been universally embraced, especially in more rural parts of the state, where many private homes are flying the old flag. Even some city councils and county boards have decided to stick with the old flag. The disagreement has been strong enough that state legislators have proposed penalties for local governments that do not fly the official design.
Why the resistance to the new flag?
Some critics have claimed that the new flag resembles the flag of Somalia. The official explanation of the design points instead to Minnesota-specific symbols: the shape of the state, the importance of water, and the North Star.
Whether one sees a visual resemblance to the Somali flag, and whether that would be problematic, is not a matter of facts. Emotions and perceptions drive any such interpretation. What matters is that the accusation itself is revealing. It points to a conflicted state, where high-profile fraud scandals and intense conflict over ICE are now reverberating in the conflict over the flag.
It would be easy to focus on that division, and on the fear that it might lead to greater conflict.
And yet, the unifying presence of the American flag, speaks to the unifying values of pluralism, freedom of expression, local self-government, and tolerance for disagreement. It is a great reminder for America’s 250th: we do not need to share everything in common. We just need to share enough to tolerate our differences.
To me, the conflict over the Minnesota flag reveals liberal society at its best. Never perfect harmony, but ongoing disagreement within a shared civic order. It brings back the old, nowadays unfashionable, melting pot idea: the possibility of living together with difference under a larger and more generous civic identity.
As America approaches its 250th birthday, it is tempting to focus only on division. There is plenty of it. We disagree about foreign policy, our history, immigration, schools, policing, speech, borders, religion, how to treat algae in the Reflecting Pool, and what kind of country we are becoming.
But driving through a quiet Minnesota town before the Fourth of July, I see plenty of evidence that a shared identity still holds.
