I have read this thread with amazement at the depth of erudition and insight we can muster in this wonderful environment. I have little to add, but this one thought.

People form groups over shared ideas and a quest for shared survival. As Brendy experienced upstairs, the amount of misinterpretation in a communication between humans is potentially infinite. Flags, generally, are thus impossible porpositions, in respect of the fact that they cannot really represent common understandings or agreements. The density of thought and the multiplicity of overlays which goes into such a symbol is far too layered and complex for a single meaning to really be generally accepted to such an icon.

The United States flag, for example, has some very beautiful, highly abstract meanings attached to it such as liberty and freedom of expression; but the unreconstructed rebel sees it as a scurrilous symbol of Federalist meddling, quite contrary to its generally perceived symbolism but not without real experience from the Southern perspective. What the same symbol represents to those outside its subscriber group can be even more dismally polarized -- for example, the middle managers of North Korea, or the housewives of Iraq.

Thus to speak of one flag as meaning anything particular is a misnomer; the darn things are almost by definition tokens of a mishmash of mixed efforts and feelings and meanings. Might as well ask "What does a dictionary mean?".

In short, we would do well in our individual and our common pursuits to avoid anchoring our thought processes on such compressed and complex icons, because they only embody a myriad confluence of meanings, never one or even a few. Better we should focus on individual integrity and clear thought for the good of as many as possible.

My two cents worth, discounting for inflation :>)

A