The parallels between the American Civil Rights movement and current events in NI are obvious enough, but, sadly, the underlying problems are not unique to those two spots on the globe. The issue of flags is what I think academicians might call a problem in iconography - physical symbols with different meanings (and degrees of meaning) to different observors. The "problem" is that though the symbols themselves remain fairly constant, the meanings attached to them tend to "evolve". The far greater problem, IMHO, is that such inane obsessions with flags reflect a backwards looking mind-set. What value or wisdom be there in backing into the future? The wiser approach would be to know and remember the history, in the hope of not repeating it's mistakes, while moving forward with resolve. Utopia doesn't exist, but the concept is still a useful goal.