Via the NYT: Another Provocative Flag Was Flown at Another Alito Home.
Last summer, two years after an upside-down American flag was flown outside the Virginia home of Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., another provocative symbol was displayed at his vacation house in New Jersey, according to interviews and photographs.
This time, it was the “Appeal to Heaven” flag, which, like the inverted U.S. flag, was carried by rioters at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Also known as the Pine Tree flag, it dates back to the Revolutionary War, but largely fell into obscurity until recent years and is now a symbol of support for former President Donald J. Trump, for a religious strand of the “Stop the Steal” campaign and for a push to remake American government in Christian terms.
Three photographs obtained by The New York Times, along with accounts from a half-dozen neighbors and passers-by, show that the Appeal to Heaven flag was aloft at the Alito home on Long Beach Island in July and September of 2023. A Google Street View image from late August also shows the flag.
So, what does the flag represent?
Until about a decade ago, the Appeal to Heaven flag was mostly a historical relic. But since then it has been revived to represent “a theological vision of what the United States should be and how it should be governed,” said Matthew Taylor, a religion scholar at the Institute of Islamic, Christian and Jewish Studies. He is also the author of a forthcoming book tracing how a right-wing Christian author and speaker who repopularized the flag helped propel Mr. Trump’s attempt to overturn the election.
That figure, Dutch Sheets, has led a yearslong campaign to present the flag to political figures, including Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and vice-presidential pick, and an Indiana gubernatorial candidate whom Mr. Sheets wrapped in the flag at a recent rally. Republican members of Congress and state officials have displayed the flag as well, among them Doug Mastriano, a Pennsylvania state senator and a leader of the “Stop the Steal” campaign. The highest-ranking elected official known to show the flag is Representative Mike Johnson, who hung it at his office last fall shortly after becoming speaker of the House.
[…]
In 2013, Mr. Sheets, a prominent figure in a far-right evangelical movement that scholars have called the New Apostolic Reformation, discovered the nearly forgotten flag and made it the symbol of his ambitions to steep the country and the government in Christianity, he wrote in a 2015 book also titled “An Appeal to Heaven.”
“Rally to the flag,” he wrote. “God has resurrected it for such a time as this. Wave it outwardly: wear it inwardly. Appeal to heaven daily for a spiritual revolution that will knock out the Goliaths of our day.”
The flag’s origins are from the Revolutionary War and the phrase is from John Locke, and is specifically linked to the notion of rebellion. As such, it does have an element of historical curiosity linked to it. However, as the piece notes it was utterly obscure until Sheets actively revived it. While one might conceive of an individual seeing such a flag an thinking it was appealing to them in some way, it isn’t the kind of thing one expects a person to randomly decide that they want to fly it.
There is no doubt that the flag has taken on a very specific political message in recent years and it strikes me as highly unlikely that the Alitos were unaware of this fact. Flying a flag is a rather deliberate act, and it is one that almost certainly is more than just an aesthetic choice, but is almost definitionally an act designed to send a message.
At the barest of minimums, a Supreme Court Justice would have to know that any flag flown at his property is an invitation for others to see a message and to have to interpret its meaning.
As the linked piece notes, the flag was quite prominent at the Stop the Steal rally on January 6th, and was also seen at the attack on the capitol. Apart from that, it has clearly become a symbol of a specific interaction of right-wing political Christianity.
This is not the kind of thing that ought to be flown at the home of a Supreme Court Justice.
Judges are not supposed to give any impression of bias, yet the flag could be seen as telegraphing the Alitos’ views — and at a time when the justices were on the cusp of adopting a new ethics code. “We all have our biases, but the good judge fights against them,” said Charles Geyh, a law professor at Indiana University Bloomington. “When a judge celebrates his predispositions by hoisting them on a flag,” he added, “that’s deeply disturbing.”
When coupled with the upside-down American flag previously discussed, Justice Alito is sending strong signals that he does not feel the need to even appear to be unbiased and fair. He certainly does not appear to care that he helping to further erode public confidence in the Court.
