Follow-Through Can Be a Bitch

I love seeing irony in the wild, and this was today's example:

1) a sign pugnaciously reading "These colors don't run," surrounding an American flag, in the back window of a van.

2) completely washed out and faded by months, if not years, of sunlight.

It might not be "running," precisely, but I don't think that sign is saying what its owner wants it to say.

That also made me wonder about that phrase, and I realized that I don't quite get it. Clearly, it's not just a claim that our nation possesses color-fast dyes, so our flags will maintain their color wash after wash. I guess it could be a coded "never surrender" idea, with a mild pun on "run." But I actually think it belongs the the very large category of bellicose but mildly stupid expressions of blind patriotism -- saying "this is my flag, the best fucking thing in the world because it's my flag."