Flag myths almost every American believes

Something I've noticed after years of talking about flags for a living is the more patriotic someone is about the United States flag, the more likely they are to be wrong about how to treat it.

Not because they don't care (they care a lot). But of all the stuff that gets passed around as "official flag etiquette", a surprising amount of it just isn't true.

It's lore dressed up as 'law'. So let's go through the big ones:

The Betsy Ross story is almost certainly fiction

The version most Americans learned goes like this: George Washington visited Betsy Ross at her upholstery shop in Philadelphia. He showed her a rough sketch. She suggested five-pointed stars instead of six-pointed ones (George did use six pointed stars in his HQ flag), and then she sewed the first flag.

Beautiful story...hardly any historical evidence for any of it.

The story didn't surface until 1870, nearly a century after it supposedly happened. That's when Betsy's grandson, William Canby, stood up at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and told the family account, based on recollections passed down through relatives. Ninety-four years after the fact. No documents. No letters. No invoices. Just family memory filtered through four generations.

Here's what we do have documented: Francis Hopkinson, a Founding Father, signer of the Declaration of Independence, and federal judge, submitted an itemized bill to the Continental Congress in 1780 for "designing the Great Seal and the flag of the United States of America." Congress rejected his payment claim of "a Quarter Cask of the public wine" (iconic). They argued he wasn't the only person involved, and denying his request for wine multiple times (legendary), but his paper trail exists. It's specific. It's dated. It's from the actual era.

Did Betsy Ross make flags? Very likely. Philadelphia seamstresses made flags for Continental forces. But "made flags" and "designed the American flag" are two different claims, and only one of them has documentation behind it.

Gilbert Baker, who designed the original rainbow pride flag in 1978, called himself "the Gay Betsy Ross." He was being funny...but he was also, technically, more documented as a vexillographer (flag designer) than she is.

That big flag held on the field before sporting events? TOTALLY against the rules.

This one drives me nuts, and it happens at literally every major sporting event in the country.

You've seen it. Before the national anthem, a group of people unfurl a massive flag and holds it flat over the field. The crowd cheers. It looks patriotic, but...

It directly violates the Flag Code...the "Respect For The Flag" part too. 

Title 4 of the U.S. Code, Section 8(c): "The flag should never be carried flat or horizontally, but always aloft and free."

That's not a gray area. This has been in the Flag Code since it was adopted in 1942.

Sure, nobody is going to get arrested over it (or any breaking of the Flag Code, thankfully). The Flag Code has no criminal penalties for private citizens, and the Supreme Court confirmed in 1989 that flag-related expression is protected speech.

But "nobody will enforce it" and "it's actually respectful" are not the same thing.

If you're going to "honor the flag", it helps to follow the rules determining what honoring it actually looks like. 

There is no bullet on top of the flagpole

This one gets passed around in military circles like gospel.

The story: the golden ball at the top of a military flagpole (called the finial, or sometimes the "truck") contains a bullet, a match, and a razor blade. If the enemy overruns your position and capture is certain, the last soldier retrieves these items, uses the match to burn the flag, and uses the bullet as a last resort.

It's a powerful image and it sounds like exactly the kind of odd tradition the military would codify.

BUT...there is no Department of Defense regulation supporting this. No military branch policy. No written order from any branch, any era, anywhere. The American Legion has addressed it, Snopes documented it, and military historians have looked and found nothing.

The finial on a flagpole is decorative. On hollow poles, it keeps water out and sometimes houses a pulley for the rope. That's its job, the rest is folklore.

Where did it come from? Nobody knows exactly. It has the structure of military oral tradition: solemn, specific, gives weight to something most people walk past every day without thinking about it. That's why it spread...but spreading doesn't make it true. This one never had an origin in written policy because it was never policy.

A flag that touches the ground is not a dead flag

"The flag touched the ground. You have to burn it now."

I definitely grew up believing this one, probably passed down to me in Cub Scouts or something. But like the others...It's not in the Flag Code.

The Code says the flag "should not touch anything beneath it, such as the ground." That's about preventing contact in the first place. It says nothing about what to do if contact happens. There is no provision requiring retirement or destruction of a flag just because it made contact with the grass.

The actual retirement rule: when a flag is worn out, faded, or no longer "a fitting emblem for display," retire it with dignity. Burning is the preferred method. Condition is what matters. Whether it touched the ground is not part of the equation.

If a flag slips at a ceremony and someone picks it up, the flag is fine. Clean it, fold it properly, move on.

This myth has the structure of a real rule. It sounds like something that would be in the code. It just isn't.

The 13 folds don't have official meanings

You've probably seen this at a funeral or a veteran's event. The flag is folded 13 times, and each fold is assigned a meaning: faith, honor, a tribute to veterans, a reference to the Declaration of Independence, a prayer, etc.

All. Made. Up.

The assigned meanings for each of the 13 folds appear nowhere in the Flag Code, nowhere in the Department of Defense manual, and nowhere in any official government document. They developed as a grassroots tradition, probably sometime in the mid-20th century, and spread through military community culture the way good traditions do.

The DoD does have standardized language for presenting a folded flag to a family at a military funeral. That part is official. The specific symbolic meaning attached to each of the 13 folds is not.

This isn't meant to take anything away from the ceremony. Traditions develop meaning through use, and this one clearly means something profound to the people who carry it out. But there's a difference between living tradition and official government policy, and it's worth knowing which one you're describing (and passing on to others).

The Flag Code is law. It also has no teeth.

This one surprises people: the U.S. Flag Code is technically part of federal law (Title 4, Chapter 1). It's real legislation.

It also has no criminal penalties attached for private citizens. None.

Throughout the Code, the language is "should" and "custom" rather than "shall" and "must." And even where it reads like a rule, the Supreme Court settled the enforcement question in 1989 in Texas v. Johnson: flag desecration as a form of political expression is protected under the First Amendment.

So the Flag Code is law in the sense that it's written down in the legal code. It doesn't carry any consequences for civilians who don't follow it.

This matters because a lot of flag policing in everyday life gets done in the name of "the law" when the more accurate word is "etiquette." Both can be worth following, they're just not the same thing. So maybe chill out a bit. 

Gold fringe on a courtroom flag means nothing

This last one is a strange ride, so hang on.

There's a theory (popular in sovereign citizen circles) that when a U.S. courtroom displays an American flag with gold fringe around the edges, it signals the court is operating under admiralty or maritime law rather than civil law. The claim goes that this secretly strips you of your constitutional rights.

No court has ever upheld this. Judges who have heard the argument have called it, "nonsense" (that's a direct quote from a Wisconsin judge during the Darrell Brooks trial in 2021).

Gold fringe on a flag is decorative. The American Legion describes it as "an honorable enrichment to the flag." The Flag Code neither requires it nor prohibits it. It has zero legal implications about jurisdiction, court type, or your rights inside that room. It's just which flag the person bought at the time.

The sovereign citizen movement has generated A LOT of...creative...legal theories. Courts have rejected them, uniformly, every single time. The fringe theory is among the more colorful ones, and it keeps resurfacing because it sounds just technical enough to seem like it might be real.

It isn't.

Why this matters

Flags are symbols. They carry weight because people decide they do. The rules around them reflect the values a community attaches to that symbol. And you can't force someone to attach the same values to it, even if they are in that same community.

When those rules get replaced with myths that were never true, we don't honor the flag more. We just honor a story we invented about it and move further away from the intended meanings.

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Hope this helps next time your uncle whips one of these out at the 4th of July party. Feel free to send him the link. 

Make Good Waves,

Michael - Flags For Good

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Frequently Asked Questions About U.S. Flag Rules and Etiquette

Did Betsy Ross design the American flag?

Almost certainly not, though the story is deeply embedded in American culture. The tale first appeared in 1870, nearly 94 years after the event supposedly occurred, through a family account from Ross's grandson. There is no contemporary documentary evidence supporting it. Historian consensus gives stronger credit to Francis Hopkinson, a New Jersey delegate to the Continental Congress, who submitted an invoice to the government for designing several national symbols including the flag.

Is it illegal to let the American flag touch the ground?

No. The U.S. Flag Code states the flag should not touch the ground, but the Flag Code carries no criminal penalties for private citizens. The Supreme Court affirmed in 1989 that flag-related expression is protected speech. Allowing the flag to touch the ground is discouraged by etiquette but is not a crime, and does not require the flag to be destroyed or retired.

Is it against the rules to display a flag flat over a football field?

Technically, yes. Title 4, U.S. Code, Section 8(c) states the flag "should never be carried flat or horizontally, but always aloft and free." The large horizontal flag displays common at NFL and college games violate this provision of the Flag Code. However, as the Code carries no penalties for private citizens, there is no legal consequence.

What does each fold mean when the flag is folded at a military funeral?

The 13 folds used in military flag-folding ceremonies are often recited with symbolic meanings, but those meanings have no official government documentation. The U.S. Army and other branches do not have an official published explanation assigning meaning to each fold. The meanings commonly recited are a grassroots tradition, not official military doctrine.

Does the gold fringe on an American flag mean you are under military or maritime law?

No. Gold fringe on a flag is purely decorative and has been used on indoor ceremonial flags since the 19th century. It has no legal significance and does not change the jurisdiction of any court or proceeding. This claim originates in sovereign citizen theory and has no basis in U.S. law or flag regulation.

Does a military flagpole finial contain a bullet, a match, and a razor blade for emergency flag destruction?

No. There is no Department of Defense regulation or official military documentation supporting this belief. It is folklore. The ball or eagle finials used on military flagpoles are decorative and contain no such items.

Can someone be arrested for burning the American flag?

No. The Supreme Court ruled in Texas v. Johnson (1989) and United States v. Eichman (1990) that burning the American flag as a form of political protest is protected free speech under the First Amendment. The Flag Code discourages flag burning except as a method of respectful retirement; for guidance on that, see Proper Ways to Dispose of American Flags.

Where can I buy an American flag?

Flags For Good carries a range of American flags — and every purchase donates $1 to a cause of your choice.