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Socrates was the ancient Greek philosopher whose method of questioning — the Socratic method — became the foundation of Western philosophical inquiry. He wrote nothing himself; everything we know of him comes through his students, primarily Plato. He was tried and executed in 399 BC for impiety and corrupting the youth of Athens — a charge that amounted to asking too many inconvenient questions in public. He claimed, famously, that the unexamined life is not worth living. His declaration of world citizenship was not an act of abandonment of his city but an act of moral expansion: to belong to one place should not mean being closed to all others.

June 14 is Flag Day, commemorating the adoption of the United States flag by the Second Continental Congress on June 14, 1777. Flag Day celebrates a symbol of national identity — the red, white, and blue that binds a diverse country into a common story. Socrates's quote doesn't undercut that. It deepens it. The best version of patriotism has always been the kind that loves its own place while remaining open to the rest of the world — that takes pride in what is particular without pretending that the particular is everything. America's flag has, at its best, stood for ideals that were never just American: liberty, equality, justice. Socrates, citizen of the world, would have understood.