Tim Kaine: 250 years later, the Virginia flag still warns us about tyranny

Earlier this month marked 250 years since the Second Virginia Convention - a precursor to the Declaration of Independence and a gathering of minds that featured the timeless exhortation from Patrick Henry to "Give me liberty or give me death."

The anniversary of this speech is one of many such anniversaries in the next year or so as we mark a quarter-millennium of American democracy and Virginia's role in it. But lately I've been thinking about one particular facet of Virginia’s history as an incubator of American democracy - one that’s lesser-known even though many of us pass by it every day: the Virginia flag.

Our flag, and the motto it bears, sic semper tyrannis, offer valuable lessons that are still relevant today.

In July 1776, while many of our founding fathers were in Philadelphia to debate and then ratify the Declaration of Independence, a smaller contingent was in Williamsburg. On July 5, 1776, the Virginia Convention ratified the Virginia Declaration of Rights, adopted the first Constitution of Virginia and elected Patrick Henry as independent Virginia’s first governor. And they did one other thing — they adopted the Seal of the Commonwealth of Virginia, which would become our state flag.

After four days squirreled away in the library at William and Mary, a committee led by George Wythe had a design ready for the Convention’s approval, receiving the green light immediately. The description of the Virginia state seal embraced by the Convention, and later the General Assembly, was as follows:

"The great seal of the Commonwealth shall consist of … such words and figures engraved as follows: On the obverse, Virtus, the genius of the Commonwealth, dressed as an Amazon, resting on a spear in her right hand … her left foot on the form of Tyranny, represented by the prostrate body of a man, with his head to her left; his fallen crown nearby, a broken chain in his left hand, and a scourge in his right. Above the group and within the border conforming therewith, shall be the word Virginia, and in the space below, on a curved line shall be the motto Sic Semper Tyrannis."

The legislative enactment went on to describe the reverse side of the state seal, but I won’t dwell on it since it never became part of the Virginia flag. The front side of the state seal, set against a blue background, became the Virginia flag in the early 1800s, first by conventional usage and finally by official designation in 1861. A figure representing the Roman embodiment of virtue wields a spear, a sword at her side, as she towers triumphantly over a felled king.

Those who designed the seal, including Wythe, all owned slaves. But they could have dictated that the tyrant be prostrate without dictating that the tyrant have a broken chain in his hand. This points to the great internal sense of cognitive dissonance felt by many of the founders about the issue of slavery.

But the most striking feature of the Virginia flag is our motto: sic semper tyrannis. While most states have positive or affirming mottos — in fact, all 49 other than Virginia do — the commonwealth stands alone in departure from that trend. Our motto is a rebuke: Thus be it ever to tyrants.

This was a bold pick in 1776. Virginia supported independence, but there were many loyalists living in the commonwealth. And there were others who, though critics of King George, were not generally opposed to monarchy. Finally, the revolution was only just beginning, and the odds were stacked against the American colonists as they sought to defeat the most powerful nation on Earth.

But as bold as it was in that place and time, the motto also looks to the future. The fight against tyranny, according to the Virginia flag, is not past-tense. It is in the present and the future. Tyranny is not eradicated from our globe or even from our nation. As a young man, I lived in under a military dictatorship in Honduras, and learned that democracy as I then understood it and took for granted is never a sure thing. Tyrants rule and rampage abroad — like Russia’s Vladimir Putin, who chose to invade a neighboring democracy.

And threats of tyranny exist here, too. At home we see attacks on the press, on the independent judiciary, on equal justice under law, on the constitutional framework of separation of powers. We see the use of violence to try and overturn election results. Are these just the 21st-century versions of normal political differences — or are these the very trends that Wythe warned us about when he designed the Virginia flag?

Plato wrote about tyranny nearly 2,500 years ago. He noted that tyrants usually arise from democracy, and that they arise in a distinct fashion: "This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector."

The Virginia flag contains a warning about tyranny and a confident assertion that it will be defeated by virtue. As we embark on commemorating 250 years of American democracy, our flag raises two timeless questions:

Do we retain the ability to recognize tyranny?

Do we possess the virtue to defeat it?

U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Virginia, is a former Virginia governor, Richmond mayor and City Council member. Contact him at Kaine.senate.gov.