Written by Thomas Magstadt   

Every election year across America, flags come out in neighborhoods with yard signs supporting conservative causes and candidates. This year is no exception.

Self-proclaimed conservatives have taken ownership of the flag, as though it's the owning class that provides the cannon fodder for our foolhardy wars.

The closer we get to election day, the more flags appear, even as Romney-Ryan signs spring up like poison mushrooms in certain parts of prosperous Johnson County, Kansas – the same tree-lined streets where the family sedan or SUV in the driveway often sports a "support our troops" decal or a patriotic bumper sticker.

Conservatives can have the decals and bumper stickers, but they can't have the stars and stripes. The flag belongs to all of us.

Let's make the 2012 election a referendum on honesty and integrity in politics.

How? What can anybody do? What everybody can do, but liberals are not in the habit of doing...

Show the flag.

No matter how this election turns out, let's promise to do one thing that costs little or nothing and requires a minimum of effort.

Let's take back the flag.

If you are liberal and your neighbors know it, don't be afraid to show it. The flag, that is.

If you are sick of conservatives claiming to be better Americans than the rest of us even as they continue to support a political party bent on ruining the country, show the flag.

If you believe that it's wrong to send young men and women to fight and die in ill-conceived and unwinnable wars, show the flag.

If you think it's wrong to cut Social Security, Medicare, and funding for biomedical research and public education while pouring trillions of dollars into military facilities and weapons we don't need, and military adventures we can't afford, show the flag.

If you want to shorten campaigns, overturn Citizens United, and make politics about fixing problems rather than buying politicians, show the flag.

If you want Washington to balance the federal budget without breaking the back of the middle class, show the flag.

If you want to restore fairness to a system of taxation that heavily favors the super rich and penalizes hard work for little pay and few if any benefits, show the flag.

Finally, if you want to change the direction this country is headed and reverse the trend toward ever-greater concentration of wealth in the hands of ever-fewer individuals – show the flag.

Why liberals allowed conservatives to claim the high ground when it's the conservative Republicans who hold extreme views on a wide variety of issues from Social Security and public education to rape and abortion is a mystery.

Why voters reward Republicans for pushing solutions to problems that, typically, call for sacrifices by the middle-class, cut benefits for the sick and needy, and ask nothing of those who have everything is a mystery.

Why liberals have allowed conservatives, evangelical Christians, and Republicans to appropriate the flag is a mystery.

Claiming an exclusive right to this powerful symbol is the core precept of Republican propaganda. Let's start challenging this kind of patriotism on the cheap.

Let's start something in this election. Let's restore sanity and decency in our politics and settle for nothing less.

From here on out, liberals, every time voters go to the polls, let's show the flag.