A company of militiamen from Culpepper County, Virginia also carried a "DON'T TREAD ON ME" flag, but on a white field, and with the added words, “LIBERTY OR DEATH.”

It was during this same period that Commodore Esek Hopkins directed his ships to fly a “striped jack” with – as some historians suggest – an uncoiled snake and the motto, "DON'T TREAD ON ME."

This flag became known as the first American “Navy Jack.” And on May 31, 2002, the old “Navy Jack” was ordered by the Secretary of the Navy to be flown aboard “all U.S. Navy ships during the Global War on Terrorism.”

Today the old rattlesnake “Navy Jack” flies from my front porch.

Subversive? Hardly.

An unapologetic expression of pride in – and love for – American independence and the kind of defiant, can-do-despite-the-odds courage exhibited throughout history in places with names like Lexington, Yorktown, Fredericksburg, Bastogne, Hue, and Fallujah?

You bet.