>> From WXXI News, this is Connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

Our connection this hour was made during the week of July 7th across New York State.

During that week, American flags outside government buildings were at half staff.

And perhaps you didn't notice.

Maybe you did.

If you did.

What did you think?

As reported by journalist Justin Murphy, the gesture would likely have elicited only a shrug.

That week, Governor Kathy Hochul ordered the flags to be flown at half staff to honor a fallen firefighter in Binghamton.

James Sitek was chief of the West Colesville Fire Company.

He went into cardiac arrest after responding to a house fire on the Fourth of July, and was pronounced dead at the hospital later that day.

Community members in Binghamton knew the lowered flag was in honor of James Sitek, but here in Rochester and the Finger Lakes or in other areas throughout the state, it's likely most people didn't know why the flag was at half staff.

In his debut piece for The Atlantic, titled Stop Lowering the Flag, Justin Murphy writes that in the last 15 years, flags in New York State have been lowered on what equates to about one day a week.

He argues that the frequency at which the flag is lowered has detracted from what was once a relatively rare symbol of public mourning and respect.

So, yeah, I'm curious to know what listeners think here.

When do you think the flag should be lowered?

Are there other ways to publicly honor people whose lives have been lost?

A lot of people in our area have probably been thinking about this in the last couple of months.

The assassination of Charlie Kirk led to President Trump ordering flags at half staff.

and, you know, certainly we did see the flags at half staff.

Some critics wondered why it was a conservative activist whose whose death led to that and not the Minnesota lawmaker who is a Democrat who was assassinated.

That did not lead the president to ordering flags at half, half staff.

So there's a debate in a lot of different directions.

And we're going to talk about the history and where we are now.

Justin Murphy, a local freelance journalist, joining us in the studio, a historian, a journalist and now an Atlantic writer.

>> Hi, Evan.

>> Put it on the resume.

I literally texted Justin when I saw the piece hit and I went, wait a second, how did you do that?

How did you do that.?

>> Hard work and dedication.

>> There you go.

Nice to see you back here.

And welcome on the line to Dr.

Brandon Rottinghaus.

Brandon is a professor at the University of Houston.

Joining us.

Brandon, thanks for making time for the program.

>> Hey, thanks for having me.

>> so we're going to talk to Professor Rottinghaus in just a moment about some of the history, but let me just back up and ask you why you decided that this was a piece you wanted to to put together in the first place.

>> It's been a long standing not pet peeve, but I would say for me personally, kind of a sense of source of discomfort, I would see the flags down and not know why.

And I kind of assumed that something bad had happened, like a shooting or a military disaster of some kind.

And I hadn't noticed it in like, I should have been paying closer attention, and I was kind of a jerk for not remembering that, oh, that thing happened.

In California last week or whatever.

I was so that was kind of my interest was to, to not only, like, interrogate.

why flags are down and how often they're down, but to get at that feeling that I assume other people shared that it it really brings a sense of malaise and not a lot else.

I was surprised when I did the research.

I put in a freedom of Information request with the state to get the the list of all the lowerings in the last 15 years that it's actually seldom that it's more often something like the one that you mentioned and that I wrote about the fire chief in Binghamton.

In fact, today's Thursday yesterday, the flags were lowered for a New York state trooper who died after he was at 9/11 and became ill and died in relation to that.

And so yesterday, the flags were lowered all across the state.

And that's usually kind of the nature of it.

And I think that's interesting.

And it in what it says about the way that we mourn or don't.

>> Know, I.

>> I want to share some of the the sentiment that you have about the confusion sometimes I like you if I see flags at half staff and, you know, a president has not just passed, I do wonder what I've missed.

I do wonder what it is about.

I get a general discomfort that, as you say, something bad has happened, but I'm not even really aware of it.

and then I go, like, I wonder how long will this coffee take at Starbucks?

I mean, like, you're on to the next thing, and it doesn't really lead to, I think, what the intention is, although we'll ask Dr.

Rottinghaus maybe about that.

But I mean, how would you describe what the intention of this practice should be?

Justin.

>> I think that it is to signal to that person's family and loved ones that they were important.

And I, I suppose in some sense it's to signal to the rest of us that an important person died.

But one of the problems, I think, is that there's really no effective mechanism of communication for a thing like that.

You know, they send out press releases that either get picked up or not.

but there's no real way, you know, it's not like there's subtitles on the flagpole, and you can find out what happened so that intention, if that's what the intention is from the state gets immediately lost.

>> Yeah.

And I want to also say that Charlie Kirk only gets a short mention in this piece.

This is not a piece about Kirk or the decision to lower the flags after Charlie Kirk's assassination.

For anyone who might be wondering, certainly that is one of the more high profile recent cases.

My sense is that your disposition towards that action would be the same.

Had The White House ordered the flags lowered when the Minnesota Democratic lawmaker was assassinated, which is that while gestures might be well-intended, whether it's a Democrat in a state legislature who's assassinated or whether it's a conservative activist who's assassinated, that you would sort of oppose both cases just on the grounds that the meaning gets lost, that we would be feeling the same sort of confusion.

and that there's different ways to kind of honor someone.

Is that is that a fair assessment?

>> Well, I think the thing that you can say in defense of the Charlie Kirk flag lowering is that we at least all knew what it was for and so that already clears what in my mind is maybe the most important bar professor Rottinghaus will be able to talk about the way that different presidents have put their own imprint on the practice.

And Trump is not alone in in using flag lowering kind of to advance his own paradigm or whatever.

I can see the case for lowering the flag for Charlie Kirk.

Even those of us who didn't agree with almost anything he said can all agree that this is a regrettable moment in our country's history and maybe would be a good time to to take a pause.

But at the minimum, it's good that we know why it was lowered.

>> Okay, fair and just using that bar earlier this year when a Democratic lawmaker in Minnesota was assassinated.

It did not break through sort of the zeitgeist in the same way that the Charlie Kirk assassination did.

I'm not opining on whether it should or shouldn't have.

I'm I'm observing that it didn't that the average person on the street didn't really know that in the way they would have known about Kirk.

And so, in your view, the Kirk assassination actually clears the bar more than maybe that case in Minnesota would.

>> I think that, you know, you can't you can't ask the flag lowering to do all the heavy lifting.

It's true that the Charlie Kirk got more press because he was a more prominent person to start with, and because it well, I don't know why, but he it you're right.

It was more of a media moment.

I think it would have been appropriate to lower the flag for the lawmaker in Minnesota as well.

in that I think also would have been legible.

>> Okay.

well, let's ask Professor Rottinghaus for a little history here.

First of all, my understanding is you got a little database of presidential proclamations on this.

And as Justin notes in his piece for The Atlantic, professor it wasn't always this frequent and this way.

Do you want to take us through some of that history?

>> Yeah.

For sure.

The way that presidents have evolved as a kind of national leader is interesting.

And the flag lowering is sort of part of that.

During these moments of crisis, presidents behave as a kind of healer in chief.

Their goal is to try to bring the country together during these times of crisis.

Sometimes these crises are natural disasters.

Sometimes they're human made disasters.

And in every case, it's a moment for presidents to try to act like the national unifier.

Members of Congress and governors sort of have a very provincial sense of their own standing in terms of the public.

And the president is the only real operative who has got this national standing.

And so as the process has evolved and as presidents have become national leaders, which is fraught in and of itself, you definitely see presidents trying to use this as a way to become that national leader.

and as you asked, of course, you know, this has developed over time.

You certainly see a change in terms of how presidents have done this.

It's really only since Eisenhower, where this has become more formulaic.

That's laid down in law, like the techniques and things like that.

you know, after that President Kennedy began to honor specific victims of things that were, that happened, the USS Thresher disaster was one of them.

after that, you certainly see people like President Carter proclaiming servicemen who died in the hostage rescue operation.

is is a kind of moment to lower the flag.

So you see a kind of shift, I think, happening at that point during the Reagan, and Bush administrations, it shifts from honoring elected officials who've died to honoring more public figures in general.

So that really opens the door to the kind of moment we're talking about now, where you have this tragedy as a result from this sort of act, and it honors a specific person.

So you do see this transition from the collective memorization of the memorialization of these efforts to move from sort of originally nautical disasters, military issues to being more about cultural figures and peace time disasters.

>> Was there a time professor when it started to appear more partisan?

I only ask because I think the average listener probably shares Justin Murphy's feeling that a lot of the flag lowerings are confusing, and my guess is the average person would also think that it is not a healthy development.

If you're going to choose to lower it for if it's a lawmaker in your party the president says, yep, let's lower them.

If it's the opposing political party.

No.

Charlie Kirk.

Yes.

If it had been a progressive commentator in the exact same circumstance with the exact same sort of public reaction, I think it's fair to wonder if this president in fact, I'd be very surprised if President Trump would have ordered the flags to be lowered for a progressive commentator who was one of his critics.

So was there a time where it became more sort of markedly Partizan.?

>> You, I think, certainly see that expand during the Obama years.

Now, Partizanship is in the eye of the beholder.

So what constitutes a Partizan change is sort of a little bit fuzzy.

But Bill Clinton started to do these flag lowerings.

during some national tragedies, like the Oklahoma City bombing or like during Columbine there was a claim at the time that this was sort of exploitative.

but the president wanted to use it as a way to kind of talk about these issues nationally.

George W. Bush did this as well.

Obviously, after 9/11.

That was a big one.

Military deaths during the Iraq conflict.

So that became obviously pretty fraught politically.

But Barack Obama was the one who really increased the number of these ceremonial proclamations.

effectively lowering the flag during after mass shootings or other kind of public tragedies.

so I think that's when you see the real pivot to more political issues.

>> So let me read a little bit of what Justin writes in his piece about just what's been happening recently.

The flag lowering for the fire department commander in the Binghamton area was the 21st in New York state.

And the first seven months of this year.

And here is here's a little more data on that in the last 15 years.

Justin writes, flags in New York have been lowered more than 250 times, for a total of more than 850 days of public mourning.

That equates to, as we said, roughly one day a week, with flags at half staff.

And here are some of the reasons this year for the flags in New York State to be lowered a month long commemoration of President Jimmy Carter.

How does that stack up for you?

Totally appropriate.

>> That one's in federal law.

You got to do it.

>> Got to do it.

But also makes sense.

>> Of course.

>> Yeah.

For former members of Congress.

Justin.

>> Well, now hang on a second.

Why are you making me the arbiter of.

>> Because I suspect you did not create the title of your piece.

My guess is The Atlantic.

>> Did they like the provocative titles?

>> Stop lowering the flag as the name of the title of the piece.

Did that give you any pause, or were you good with that title?

>> Well, I mean, I that's a succinct way of putting it.

>> Okay, but you're not saying never lower the flag.

You're saying mostly correct.

Stop doing it.

Yeah.

This is why I'm asking you.

Like what clears the bar for you as a historian, for members of Congress this year in New York State, the flag has been lowered to half staff four different times for the passing of former members of Congress.

What do you think?

>> Well, I guess what I would ask is, is whether people right now can think off the top of their head of one or more of those four members of Congress who have died this year.

>> Can you?

No, no.

>> Neither can I. I looked and I looked them up.

I know their names.

I can't remember any of their names.

>> And how many congressional districts do we have in the state now?

What do we have?

>> Even fewer people could answer that question.

>> 28 nine whatever it is.

Yeah.

There's no way that the average person knows more than a few members of Congress, let alone a couple dozen, let alone past members of Congress from other districts who've passed.

So using your standard, okay, I'll just use my own standard.

I don't think we should have lowered those.

That's okay.

Two New York State Police officers.

>> That's that I understand better than the former members of Congress.

I will say that.

What do you.

>> Think.

>> That's increasingly common.

In fact, there are some states.

I think Illinois is one where it's a law that the flag must be lowered for police officers, firefighters, EMTs who die in the line of work.

I think for two days, actually no, I don't think that's appropriate.

I understand the message behind it.

And, you know, certainly the what we should be saying all along here is that in no way is anyone trying to denigrate these people's services or their lives or anything like that.

But.

There's no there's no way that I could know that I'm supposed to be in mourning for a firefighter who dies in New York City or in Binghamton, or in the North Country or anywhere else.

>> a highway maintenance supervisor for the Department of Transportation for New York State.

>> Well, I don't like that one either.

>> Okay.

>> and so the numbers alone are pretty remarkable.

and I don't know if.

Professor Rottinghaus, do you want to not touch what we just touched, or do you want to weigh in on whether these instances look like appropriate examples for you of lowering the flag?

>> Well, I'm just a kid from Plano, Texas.

I don't know whether or not we should be doing this or not, but I do.

I think, feel that the way that this is done can be two ways.

One is that you have kind of the legislature ask the executive to accomplish this, and that's something that is consensual, that we agree that these are the kind of things that we care about, and the public should be informed of.

And the other is that presidents can do this on their own.

And we've seen both examples of it.

My guess probably is that the ones that are the kind of stray into political territory are ones where the president has more ability to be able to do it on their own and willingness to do it on their own.

There are a lot of proclamations I get this question a lot about the way that, you know, these overlap.

You have various competing days and weeks and months that are all kind of on the calendar at the same time.

It's a signaling mechanism for these organizations.

and certainly you know, just a way to be able to communicate some of the things that are kind of virtue based for a lot of the time, presidents do it.

So there's a lot of this and a lot of overlap on it.

But how it gets manifest should be a reflection of our national interests and the national goals.

And that's what presidents, at least intentionally, are doing.

For most of the time.

It strays off course into the politics of things, as all things do.

So it's impossible to get away from it.

But there at least needs to be some way that presidents are handling this as a moment to be able to reflect on these crises.

>> And Evan, I think that's an important distinction, is while it's increasing in prevalence among presidents, there's still some level of self-control.

They may do it a few dozen times in a term, whereas it's really governors who are driving the trend of lowering them.

They'll do it a few dozen times in a year.

And to go back to sort of the political motivations, if you're the governor and there are powerful public interest groups and members of those interest groups die, and it doesn't cost you anything to send out a one paragraph proclamation to lower the flags, then there's not really a reason not to do that.

Like once every blue moon, somebody will write the article that I wrote and like maybe people will talk about it, but there's it doesn't cost anything.

So I think that that is like really a significant driver.

>> Free political campaign capital.

>> That's right.

>> I mean, some people would say, well, that's a cynical way to.

>> Look at it.

>> It is a cynical way to look at it.

I agree.

>> I don't know that it's cynical.

There's a difference to me between cynicism and realism.

Cynicism is corrosive realism, even when it feels, for lack of a better term, negative is valuable if it's correct.

I don't know that it's cynical.

I think you might be being realistic.

Cynical would be a little flippant.

I, I just think you're right.

If politicians have this device capable of being pulling this lever, they're going to do it.

Now.

Joe, a little bit of feedback on some of these issues here.

Joel writes to say to share a story from PBS from 2018, after John McCain died, Senator McCain passes away and the flags are supposed to be lowered to half staff for X amount of time.

And The White House raises the flag before everyone else, and it was pretty clear, obviously, how President Trump felt about Senator McCain.

And all of a sudden, you had a lot of pressure from not only Senator McCain's family, but the American Legion, who put out a statement basically saying, look, this crosses a line.

And Denise Rowan is the the national commander of the American Legion at the time.

And she writes to the president on the behalf of the American Legion's 2 million wartime veterans.

I strongly urge you to make an appropriate presidential proclamation noting Senator McCain's death and legacy of service to our nation, and that our nation's flag be half staffed.

Through his full internment.

And the president responded by saying he would do it, but he would send Mike pence to all of the ceremonies.

And so he did.

I boy, it's a pretty good example of how partisanship is the wrong word.

They're in the same party.

Just how political warfare translates to whether we lower the flags or not.

And to me, it sort of gives away the game that it is kind of meaningless.

It's just a tool for people to for people in power to use it how they see fit, whether to honor, whether to campaign, whether to make a point about raising it back up too soon.

that story is probably not a surprise to you.

>> And., you know, one of the things that I didn't end up getting into as much in the pieces as I maybe hoped to, was just the idea of mourning itself.

And so, like, if we take Jimmy Carter or John McCain, you couldn't you couldn't deserve a flag lowering more than than they do.

We we can all agree on that.

And yet it's interesting to think whether any of us actually spent time in mourning over the death of Jimmy Carter, like me personally, in my heart, I did not mourn the death of Jimmy Carter.

And it's interesting when you go back and look at newspaper clips from the 19th century when there's a flag lowering for the death of Henry Clay or something, there's really a sense of mourning in the sense of like rending your clothes and gnashing your teeth that I think feels very foreign to us unless we think of it in terms of these big signal moments like 9/11, like Columbine, like you know, the Sandy hook in, you know, that's obviously an even higher bar, but there's there's this sense of what our ceremonies around flag lowering and other kinds of remembrance say about our appetite as Americans to confront our, our hard feelings or share them with each other.

>> Professor Rottinghaus, do you want to add to that?

>> Yeah, I think that the kind of collective memory is something that's important, and it does get a little cloudy when you've got so many different moments happening all at once.

I feel like that people have should have this collective memory.

It's something that does bind the nation together.

And in a time when there's such partisanship, it's important, I think, to remember these.

It's obviously going to stray into the politics of things.

Presidents have used proclamations since Ronald Reagan to be able to court groups and talk about the things that they politically are aware of, but I think that there are these moments where we should be more cognizant that we should celebrate these things.

So it's hard to know where to draw that line.

Obviously, we expect our elected officials to be able to do this faithfully, but to some degree, there has to be, I think, a limitation on it.

And there, I think, would be wise to be able to have more advanced guidelines for exactly what would constitute a kind of national emergency in this case.

>> I'm going to get Joel on the phone in a second.

John emails to ask, are there penalties?

if organizations don't lower their flags?

It's that is interesting because let me see if I've got it in the notes here.

Justin wrote that you drove past 20 public flagpoles during C-tech statewide honor.

The fire commander.

But only two out of 20 had been lowered.

Is that.

That's right.

>> Yeah.

And that really surprised me.

I had no way of anticipating that.

And when I talked to his son, he was surprised to hear that because, of course, in Binghamton, where he was on that day, they were all lowered, right, because it was an important thing.

But in his son is also a volunteer firefighter.

He made, I think, an interesting point, which is that there are physical logistics to lowering a flag.

And so if there's only one guy at the village hall who knows how to tie the knot or who has the key to the box covering the flagpole or whatever, and he is on vacation, then you can't lower the flag.

or it might be a volunteer firehouse.

That's not staffed all the time and things like that, but that that really shows.

I mean, in a sense, that's an elegant solution to when the governor orders the flags lowered for something 200 miles away.

Then we just don't do it.

And problem solved.

In a sense.

>> But and I to John's question, I don't think there's a penalty for that.

>> There's no penalty.

That's right.

Short answer is no.

There is not any penalty.

>> Yeah.

But but the the larger point John, is plenty of times.

And this kind of just makes Justin's point even more.

I think it's well taken.

Is that it's inconsistently applied just in terms of whether people are even lowering the flags or even have the resources to lower the flags or even know to do it, or want to do it.

So a lot of different orders, dozens a year, lowering the flag.

And you drive past a couple different buildings.

You might see one full one half and wonder why it's it's not it's not helpful in Rochester.

Hey, Joel, go ahead.

>> Hey, I wondered kind of what role, if any, the the flag code plays in all this discussion?

you know, for example, you know, we have in U.S.

law, even though there's no penalties for not doing, you know, for following the flag code, it's an optional set of guidelines that have been around for a long time.

But, you know, flags aren't supposed to be flown in inclement weather.

They're not supposed to be flown after dark unless they're lit.

If a flag is tattered, it's supposed to be disposed of by burning.

And and you're not supposed to use flags for advertising.

And on and on and on.

and in the case of lowering the flag to half mast, when you put that flag up for the day, it's supposed to go all the way up to the peak and then lowered to half staff, and then at the end of the day when it's, you know, removed or lowered, it's supposed to go back up to the peak and then back all the way down.

So there are all these guidelines for how to, you know, use, display and care for flags that the vast majority of people don't think about or consider or care.

Even when we've got a bunch of hyper patriots who, you know, want to want us to respect the flag and so forth and get all bent out of shape when people burn them or whatever.

So I'm wondering if there's any kind of, you know, connection between this idea of, you know, our, our collective mourning and the fact that we don't even really know enough about the flag itself and the fact that I think people really love this symbol.

But yet don't ever do anything to, you know, properly display or use or.

Yeah, or care for flags.

So thanks, Joel.

>> Thank you.

it's it's like the idea that you're offended that someone kneels during the national anthem because it, quote, dis reflects the flag, disrespects the flag.

But you've got a bathing suit.

That's an American flag.

You know, you've got jean shorts that are the American flag.

And we Willa Powell, who just covered in school board days back in your Democrat and Chronicle days sends a very similar note to Joel's point.

Willa says on the topic of flags.

I wish more people knew the regulations that govern the display of the flag.

I visited three towns along the Erie Canal.

All three had veterans parks.

Only one of them had a spotlight on the flag, though all three left their flags up after dark.

Those regulations also describe alterations to the flag.

Shall I suggest the Blue Lives Matter or the one attributing firefighters with black stripes instead of red and a red stripe red stripe replacing the white ones or wearing the flag?

All of that disrespects the flag, often at the hands of people who claim patriotism.

Also, I agree with Justin's opening remarks about the feeling that I missed something when I see the flag has been lowered.

So that's from Willow, Willa and Joel.

Very similar comments.

I'll ask both of our guests about that.

But you want to start Justin Murphy?

>> Yeah, I think that's a very, a very good point that it ties into a larger sense not only of proper protocol, but of what meaning we invest in these symbols., to answer Joel's immediate question, the the federal flag code lays out specific amounts of time that it's lowered for a president gets 30 days or a Supreme Court associate gets ten days, or senator gets things are laid out, and then they can also lower it for there's kind of a carve out for and whatever else you think might be appropriate.

And then states all have their own.

And in, in New York it says something to the effect of the governor can order the flag lowered for a public servant who, in the eyes of their community their, their death is a tragedy or something along those lines.

So it's really quite broad.

It doesn't offer any useful guidance in that sense.

>> But as a historian, there are larger point about the lack of either public education, about what constitutes respect and disrespect for the flag, how the flag should be displayed, you know, in different circumstances.

I think it's a fair one.

I think a lot of people don't realize that.

It's why you do see the flag in advertisements.

You see the flag on bathing suits.

You see in all kinds of ways that, you know, technically would fly in the face of respecting the flag.

>> Yeah, I'm I'm sure there's an entire very interesting history about the way that the flag has been treated and seen or not seen.

You know, I wonder if when these ideas were promulgated about taking it in, in inclement weather or having a light on it, there may be there weren't as many flags displayed in the first place, and there weren't that many people that had to go scurrying out to do these things.

I would be interested in the the logistics of it in that sense.

>> Well, let me ask the professor if he wants to weigh in on some of that history.

Go ahead, professor.

>> Yeah, I don't know much about the history of that in particular, but for sure, you see the flag being used for all kinds of political purposes.

There was a time in the 2016 election and 2020 election where wearing the flag pin was a necessity, and not doing it meant that you didn't care about America.

And so there is this kind of kind of trope about the way the flag is displayed and how much people care about it.

And of course, it runs afoul of these moments where people don't follow the code effectively.

I was at an event a couple of weeks ago where a gentleman was wearing a shirt that was the U.S.

Constitution, a giant eagle and the flag all kind of interwoven together.

And it was shocking and obviously pretty brazen with respect to this.

And you have to respect somebody's patriotism.

But there are rules about the flag and it seems like either they need to be amended or there needs to be more public education about it.

we have a Boy Scout troop locally that does a kind of flag drive, and they'll put a flag in your yard for various occasions, Memorial Day and Veterans Day.

And they put a little light on top of it because it flies all day.

And so I think that's something that is useful and a good reminder to people that this has to be done.

Ultimately, you know, people who put up the flag are responsible for it.

That means every part of what it means to have that flag and respecting it is part of the way that we perpetuate this valued symbol.

So I think it, you know, even still today is kind of ongoing discussion about what the flag means and whether or not it's practical to be able to burn it and things like that.

These are, like legitimate legal questions that the president is issuing executive orders about, saying it's not acceptable anymore, even though the Supreme Court has said it is.

So there's a lot of, I think, just conflict and kind of overlapping interests when it comes to how the flag is discussed.

>> will rise to say, Evan, I have a neighbor who claims that a shirt that he has, which has a flag on it, is actually the flag that flew over the White House after 9/11.

And I don't know how that would ever be true, but I've also told him I'm pretty sure that would be disrespectful.

However, I'm also pretty sure that flag designs are in a different category.

Thank you.

That's from Will.

Will, I want to talk to your neighbor.

That's a very strange story.

but, yeah, Will's right.

From what I understand, a flag design on a piece of clothing is different than an actual flag becoming clothing.

and so, yeah, there's all kinds of distinctions.

It's valuable to know them.

It's it's important to know the American Legion.

Published the original flag code.

So I appreciate Willa and Joel and will sharing their thoughts on that.

Thank you for that.

After we take our break, we'll come back.

I'll take your call.

Tamala.

I've got a couple of other emails on the subject of freedom of speech.

Some listeners tuned in her.

We were talking about the flag, thought we were talking about burning flags.

We're not talking about burning flags.

We're talking about lowering flags.

And historian and journalist Justin Murphy, who is with us this hour, wrote a piece for The Atlantic called Stop Lowering the Flags.

And it's about the history in this state and in this country of how often we lower the flag.

It's a lot more now than it used to be.

A lot of the time, it confuses people.

It's not a great form of public education.

And and so his point is, there's probably better ways to try to honor people than confusing the public in ways like this.

So we're talking to Justin about his piece, Dr.

Brandon Brandon Rottinghaus is with us, professor at the University of Houston, and we'll come right back to more of your feedback next.

I'm Evan Dawson Friday on the next Connections.

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>> This is Connections.

I'm Evan Dawson so let's get back to your phone calls.

And we've got next.

Hey, go ahead.

>> Thanks, Evan.

So here's the thing.

So we keep calling this Partizan politics.

No matter how bad things get we call it Partizan politics.

And this is not what it is.

This is extreme deterioration and extreme decadence of the country, calling it Partizan.

Politics is not going to get us anywhere.

We have to truly call things out for what they are.

We are on an extremely terrible path in this country, and we do it all over the place.

I'll give you an example.

I love your show.

Love it.

But virtually everybody you have on it, you they thank you for your expertise.

There are virtually no one who's an expert on anything.

If anyone now you can specialize in things, but there's no experts out there.

We do the same thing with teachers.

We do the same thing with policemen.

We put people on.

We do the same with firemen.

We put people on pedestals.

And I was in the army for 12 years.

And every time a war broke out, I knew ugly things were going to happen because I knew as big as the numbers game, the bigger the organization, the more bad apples you're going to have.

And so it's just to put people on a pedestal.

Blanket is a terrible thing.

And this is not Partizan politics.

This is decadence.

We are on a terrible path.

>> Mm.

thank you for the phone call.

And I will say that I do think there's expertise.

I understand the point that there's different levels of specialization.

but I think Justin Murphy, for example, has a level of expertise in the history of racism in Rochester schools.

You know, you wrote a book called your children Are very Much in Danger that I would recommend to everybody.

And I think that you've developed a level of expertise through your your scholarship on that.

I would say that Dr.

Rottinghaus has a level of expertise in his various areas of discipline.

but I'll keep in mind your comments about you know, how to how to view experience and what knowledge sort of matters.

And we're going to do our best to represent that in a lot of different ways on this program.

through the guests that we, we bring on the show.

So thank you for listening, as always.

Appreciate it.

Appreciate your feedback and your comments.

and thank you for that.

One of your old colleagues, Dave, sends us a note that says on the discussion on the history and the meaning behind and the appropriateness of lowering the flag.

I was struck by the comment earlier in the hour that flagpoles don't convey the reason for a flag lowering, but some do.

At the University of Rochester, when the flagpole bearing the university flag is ordered lowered by the university president, usually in observance of a death of the member of the faculty or prominent former member of the faculty, the university installs a temporary notice of the reason affixed by Locke to the flagpole.

One happens to be there today.

Thanks again for the discussion.

And here is an indication.

Reading flag at half staff in memory of Dr.

Robert Golden, today professor Emeritus of Music theory at the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester.

So if you're at the U of R and flags are at half staff, that's why.

And there is a notice about why.

What do you make of that?

Justin Murphy.

>> I love that.

I think that's absolutely fantastic.

It's a very elegant solution.

Good job.

University of Rochester.

>> Okay.

maybe maybe that becomes more common.

Dr.

Rottinghaus I though I, I kind of think it won't.

>> I'd love that.

Obviously, it requires significant resources, but yeah, it's something that probably is beyond most municipal, you know, organizations to do.

I like the notion, though, because it does allow us to remember.

And that's the whole point.

>> we'll get back to some of your your feedback in just a second.

You can call the program.

It's 844295 talk.

It's toll free.

8442958255263 WXXI.

If you call from Rochester 2639994, email the program Connections at WXXI.

but before we do that, I got a couple of emails about the question about flag burning and a couple of listeners thought that's what we'd be talking about.

So so some listeners point us to what the president said last week about freedom of speech, and I'm going to read the quote from October 8th.

President Trump, in issuing an executive order against flag burning.

He said, quote, I'm sorry.

I'm not trying to laugh at this.

To me, it's kind of ridiculous on its face.

He said, quote, we took the freedom of speech away as it relates to flag burnings, because that's been through the courts.

And the courts said, you have the freedom of speech, but what has happened is when they burn the flag, it agitates and it irritates.

I've never seen anything like it on both sides.

And you end up with riots.

So we took the freedom of speech away, end quote.

That's President Trump again.

I'm I'm laughing because I don't think you can just say, like, we're going to take your freedom of speech away.

That I, I kind of think I kind of think that if a Democratic president had said that the political right would be in an absolute uproar.

However let's take the president for his literal concern about flag burning.

He says it agitates and it irritates.

So we've got to take the freedom of speech away.

You've been a reporter for many years.

You've probably.

I'm curious to know if you think that agitating and irritating is is a good reason to take freedom of speech away.

>> Well, I suspect that the people who are doing the flag burning are intending to do just that.

Agitating and irritating.

>> They're probably not just warm in their backyards.

>> That's right.

So that there is a time honored and very worthy tradition of people agitating and irritating our local luminaries Frederick Douglass and Susan B Anthony were famous for calling for agitation.

and it points to the the value of the symbol of the flag that that is one of the most agitating and irritating ways to get your point across.

>> Yeah.

Dr.

Rottinghaus anything you want to add there to the president's remarks that we took the freedom of speech away on this one?

>> it's not practical and not legal.

And yeah, that's the whole point of the First Amendment.

It's supposed to incite.

It's supposed to be like anger.

It's supposed to make people think that's the whole point.

So obviously there are limits to that.

But the goal is to be able to be controversial.

That makes this country great.

So it obviously is something that wouldn't be able to hold up in court.

>> yeah.

Again, I would say as professor notes here, the courts have not supported that.

as a historian, flag burning has been happening for time immemorial.

you know, you wrote a piece about how you feel about lowering the flag.

How do you feel about burning the flags?

>> I'm personally not a person who burns flags.

>> But you're for the right to burn it if you so choose.

>> Sure.

Yeah, but I'm not going to.

>> You're not going to be doing it.

Yeah.

No, that that's that's the hardest question on speech, I think is do I find speech that is detestable to me still worth supporting as a right?

And that's a line for some people, I suppose.

But it's freedom of speech for a reason.

And I've never heard a president just say, we we canceled the freedom of speech.

But anyway, let's get, in a moment.

I'll get back to your phone calls here.

What's been the response to this piece?

Justin Murphy this piece about lowering the flags to half staff and how you'd like to see less.

A lot less of that.

>> I think that it's it's been a lot of agreement.

I think people have kind of silently had a similar experience with, with seeing this and wondering why flags are down.

You know, I think another part of the piece that was valuable to me as I was reporting it, was to think about, well, what then?

So James Sitek, I don't personally think that the flags across the state should have been lowered, but he was a volunteer firefighter for 40 years, and on the day that he died, he was went to somebody else's house at 4:00 in the morning to try to save their house and potentially their lives.

And that is a level of community dedication that almost none of the rest of us will ever achieve.

>> Absolutely.

It's remarkable.

>> And so when I was talking to his family, they were they did say it was significant to us that the governor had made this gesture.

And we appreciated that.

But they were talking more about all of these things that the fire departments did, not only their own fire department, but those from across the region and even across the state.

They were talking about the small gestures that their neighbors and their church and their community did.

and I think it's important to think more broadly about the ways that deaths get memorialized when when we see a death, and we report on it in the city of Rochester or in other places, there are often these impromptu memorials with either candles or photos or teddy bears or things like that.

there are things get named after people.

and there are a lot more personalized.

They often have a lot more meaning in that way.

And so maybe part of the hang up is it's not that we're not seeking to remember or honor people, but trying to apply a one size fits all.

Like either you're important enough to get the flag lowered across the entire state of New York, or you're not is missing a lot of necessary nuance.

>> Let me get back to your calls.

Lori in Rochester.

Hey, Lori, go ahead.

>> Hi.

can you hear me?

>> I can hear you.

Yep.

Go ahead.

>> Okay, good.

I was wondering, how do you lower those monster flags to half staff without, them touching the ground, as well as people need to learn the difference between mast and staff.

>> Okay, so two, two different things.

But when when you say the like, like the the big, huge ones you can see from miles away.

>> Yeah, yeah.

Not too far from the ground to begin with.

>> Okay.

Justin Murphy.

You want to start here?

>> I mean, very carefully.

I assume.

that's right.

I don't know.

I don't know how you lower those.

You probably have to call somebody.

>> Yeah, but.

>> But it should be.

We should point out that these proclamations apply to public.

>> Official buildings, flagpoles.

>> So.

Yeah.

On your house, I mean, if you lower a flag on your house, then, then that's nice, but that's that's up to what it says.

>> That's up to you.

And so most of the time, Lori, in fact, I'm I would hazard a guess that the flag you're talking about, those huge ones, like I think there's one on five and 20 near Canandaigua.

>> They're outside of a Perkins a lot of the time.

>> That's I was gonna I was gonna say, I was gonna say auto dealerships.

Why?

Perkins.

>> I don't know.

They saw an opening and they went for it.

And now we're talking about Perkins on the radio.

>> Do you actually know that it's Perkins that does the huge flags, or are you just guessing?

>> I think it's Perkins.

>> Okay.

>> But I don't know if Perkins is still open anymore.

>> But the flag is still there.

the.

I think they're outside auto dealerships a lot.

And the point is you are free to do at your house what you want with your flag.

Most of what we're talking about is for official buildings here.

And Perkins.

So but then the next question from Lori was half staff or half mast here.

Do you hear that a lot?

I it's half staff right.

>> It's half staff.

But that's an interesting point because it as Professor Rottinghaus alluded to, it mostly started as naval roots origins.

A death would occur on the seas and they would lower the flag on the mast of the ship.

And so it's kind of common parlance.

>> Okay professor, before we let you go, what do you want to leave with listeners as we try to I, you know, I think be more thoughtful about these questions.

and the reason I say thoughtful is I think Justin's piece reminds us that this is a practice that is supposed to have a meaning of shared grief, shared mourning, and it just doesn't really have that for most of us.

And so if it's not working, do you have thoughts as well as Justin does about maybe alternatives, or do you have anything you want to leave with the audience?

As we think about this practice?

>> Yeah, I'll just say that this is a perfect moment for presidents to be able to heal a nation during these times of crisis.

And I think that, look, we're in a highly polarized moment, and elites basically got us into it.

And I think they can get us out.

So one way they can do that is to use this as an opportunity to talk about these tragedies and to address the nation as one.

And it's a flag that's supposed to represent everybody and all these values.

And it's often treaded into political territory that's totally common.

And as we've talked about with respect to the prospect of burning it, it has implications for freedom of speech.

But this is a moment for presidents to be able to unify the country.

And that's something we sorely need right now.

So I'm in favor of having this be a realistic outcome for these kinds of moments.

And I think that if we can return to that, that just maybe there's an opportunity for us to get a foothold on a way to get the country to see eye to eye on things.

>> Dr.

Brandon Rottinghaus is a professor at the University of Houston.

and been a great resource not only for us this hour, but I know for Justin and his research for the piece on for the Atlantic called Stop Lowering the Flag.

Brandon, thanks for making time.

It's great having you on the program today.

>> Hey, thanks for having me.

>> And Justin.

As we get ready to wrap up here my guess is not a whole lot will change.

You seem to think that once in a while, someone will write a piece like this.

But politicians view this as too valuable a tool.

>> It seems that way, although it's only been a few a generation or two, that it's that this has happened.

So I wouldn't say that it's impossible.

you know, I think that it is the real negative effect of this has been an increase in our sort of aiming to not just the flag and whether it's up and down, but these kind of patriotic symbols in like, as we've talked about, Partizanship that unfortunately, is a very Partizan thing, like the the right got the flag and they got patriotism.

And sometimes the left has kind of a scornful attitude toward those.

>> You're talking about the stereotypes.

>> Stereotypically and I think there's just a lot lost there.

I think that if we were able to strip away some of this excess, then there's really a true principle at the heart that we could get to.

>> As always, thanks for being with us.

And I know that there's a lot more to talk about with the work that you're doing locally in other ways.

So we'll see you soon.

>> See you soon.

>> Justin Murphy his piece in The Atlantic this week.

It's titled Stop Lowering the Flag.

And thank you, listeners.

A lot of great feedback these two hours from the whole team at Connections.

Thanks for watching.

Thanks for listening.

Thanks for being with us on whatever platform you find us on.

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