When the NSDAP, or National Socialist Workers Party, party took over Germany in 1933, the swastika – which was the party’s symbol – decked out in red, white, and black became the national symbol. That was significant, since in the totalitarian view, party, state, and nation were one. Ein Reich, ein Fuhrer, ein Volk. The party is left out of the that trio, but no one living in Germany at the time mistook the meaning. The National Socialist party was in charge.

The opposite has happened here as we have lost our democracy. The precious symbol of our nation and our freedom, the Stars and Stripes, has instead been appropriated by the political parties. Now politicians, who can’t be trusted with our freedom any more than a weasel could, go around with little flag pins in their lapels to show they are patriots. The parties, which have no claim to power in our republican system, try to identify themselves with the national symbol.

Political parties exist for only two reasons: to recruit candidates for public office, and to help them get elected. They do not properly exist to exercise power after they get their candidates in office. Of course, we rapidly developed a spoils system in the United States, which developed over another century and a half into the abomination we have now. People would not hate Congress as much as they do if they did not hate the parties so much. Unfortunately, the parties deserve the popular disapprobation they receive.

Symbolism governs national ceremonies, so we have to pry they national flag away from the corrupt organizations that have stolen it. We cannot win our republic back if the people who have ruined our republic appropriate the national symbol for their own. The parties have not only failed to protect our Constitution, they have actively worked to destroy it. They work every day to strengthen their own power, and correspondingly, to weaken the constitutional limits that would prevent them from doing whatever they like. And their leaders wear flag pins while they go about their      destructive projects!

The next time a politician who wears a flag pin asks you for money, ask why you should help elect anyone to a criminal organization. If a group of thuggish investigators or armed men from the government came to your door, showed you their identification cards, and demanded entry, would you let them in? Of course not. They would come in anyway – it happens frequently in our country now. If that’s not criminal behavior on the street level, what is? If you would deny permission for that kind of behavior, so much more should you reject the people who sent them, the people with little pins in their lapels.