The Capitol flagpole is not a friendship bracelet

By C. J. Garbo | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice

Colorado’s State Capitol is not a festival stage. It is a civic altar of sorts, the place where law is made, rights are protected, and citizens who disagree about nearly everything are still supposed to recognize one another as equals under the same authority. That is why a flagpole on Capitol grounds is never “just symbolic.” It is government speech, rendered in cloth and wind.

Governor Jared Polis’ decision to hoist Canada’s flag over the Colorado State Capitol for the second-annual “Colorado-Canada Friendship Day” was therefore not appropriate, even if Canada is a friendly neighbor and a major trading partner.

The problem is not Canada. The problem is the office.

In March of last year, the Governor’s office framed the flag-raising explicitly as “symbolic of our friendship,” and paired it with lighting the Capitol in Canada’s colors. That is warm, upbeat language. It is also precisely the issue.

Friendship is a personal virtue. It is not a sufficient public standard for state symbolism. A governor is not a social coordinator for the state’s aesthetics. He is the temporary steward of a permanent institution, and institutions survive by making their symbols mean the same thing across time, factions, and passions.

When a government begins using its most solemn public symbols to convey sentimental messages, even agreeable ones, it quietly trains citizens to interpret the Capitol as a billboard for the preferences of whoever holds power. Today (March 12, 2026), it was Canada. Another day was Mexico, which the Polis administration also celebrated with a “Colorado-Mexico Friendship Day” tied to the Capitol. In practice, the message becomes: the Capitol flagpole is a canvas for the executive’s favored international relationships.

That is a misuse of public symbolism.

A Capitol flag is not private speech. It is an endorsement by the state.

There is a difference between recognizing another nation through diplomacy and placing that nation’s flag at the seat of state authority. A flag is not merely a decorative token. It is an emblem of sovereignty, history, and sometimes contested power. Flying it at the Capitol does not simply say “we like Canadians.” It says the State of Colorado is publicly associating itself with that nation as a political identity.

Even if that association is meant to be benign, it is still an act of selective elevation. The government has a responsibility to avoid unnecessary signals that divide citizens into “more affirmed” and “less affirmed” camps based on heritage, foreign policy sympathies, or cultural alignment.

A state should be hospitable. It should not be impressionable.

It invites factionalism into the one place that must remain above it.

The most predictable consequence of symbolic indulgence is not celebration. It is a competition.

Once a Capitol flagpole is treated as a platform for international “friendship,” the question becomes: which friendships count, and who decides? Who gets a day, a ceremony, and a flag? Who does not? And what happens when a foreign nation is involved in controversy, war, repression, or simply intense disagreement among Coloradans?

You do not need to be hostile to Canada to see the structural problem. A policy that seems harmless in a universally popular country becomes combustible the moment the country is not universally popular. The logic is the same, and that is what makes it dangerous.

A governor should lower the temperature of public life, not create new symbolic arenas where every constituency learns to lobby for the next display.

The Capitol already has a purpose-built language: the US flag and the Colorado flag.

Colorado’s own guidance on flag display emphasizes hierarchy and clarity, including that no flag should be raised above the US flag and that foreign flags have specific placement rules. Those rules exist for a reason: to preserve the meaning of the primary symbols and keep the public square intelligible.

The American flag represents the political community that guarantees the rights of Coloradans. The Colorado flag represents the shared civic identity of people who might share little else. That is enough. That is the point.

When a governor adds foreign flags for feel-good messaging, he dilutes the very clarity that flags are supposed to provide. He turns a language of unity into a language of curated affinities.

“But it’s good for trade” is still not a reason to sanctify it with the Capitol.

Colorado has real economic ties with Canada, and officials have cited trade figures in defense of the celebration. But economic partnership does not require symbolic fusion at the seat of government.

If the goal is commerce, there are better tools: trade missions, regulatory cooperation, consular engagement, business summits, and tourism promotion. Those are substantive and measurable. A foreign flag over the Capitol is not. It is theater. And the government should be very careful when it chooses theater over substance, because theater becomes habit, and habit becomes expectation, and expectation becomes entitlement.

The wise standard is restraint.

A mature state treats its most visible symbols like heirlooms: used sparingly, preserved carefully, and never leveraged for trend-driven applause.

The appropriate posture is simple:

• Welcome foreign leaders with protocol and dignity.
• Build trade and cultural ties through real agreements and real institutions.
• Celebrate the contributions of immigrants and visitors as fellow human beings and valued neighbors.
• Keep the Capitol’s primary symbols focused on the one identity every citizen shares: American citizenship, expressed through the US and Colorado flags.

Foolishly, some will reduce this position to xenophobia. It is not. It is civic sanity.

A governor is free to be friendly. The State Capitol flagpole should remain something better: a steady signal that the government belongs equally to all Coloradans, not to whatever international sentiment happens to be fashionable this season.

C. J. Garbo is a civic communicator and political strategist focused on restoring competence, accountability, and ordered liberty in public life. He’s known for clear, disciplined argumentation and an ability to translate complex policy into plain language that resonates across ideological lines. Garbo has advised and consulted elected officials and political candidates at the local, state, and federal levels, helping sharpen message discipline and policy clarity while continuously refining a principled, authentic conservatism rooted in ordered liberty, personal responsibility, and measurable outcomes.

Editor’s note: Opinions expressed in commentary pieces are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the management of the Rocky Mountain Voice, but even so we support the constitutional right of the author to express those opinions.