Whether happily or not, it seems the tiki hut turmoil in Sea Bright has come to an end. This week Andrew Mencinsky removed his hut, and public works employees were sent to remove the hut of Al Lambiase and a third hut that was under construction on the borough’s public beach.

Although undoing the men’s hard work when the borough may well put up its own huts may seem wasteful, it is the right thing to do.

There is an important principle at stake in this situation — that of keeping the public lands open to the public.

For the most part, there seems to be wide agreement on that, although Lambiase is still trying to resist.

And he’s doing it in a most unsavory way.

With the other hut builders agreeing to the removal of their structures, Lambiase acted as most would expect and went along. In doing so though, he sought to extract a price, and for all the wrong reasons, apparently borough officials agreed.

Once it was clear that the hut was going, Lambiase then made an issue of the removal of a flag and pole he put up outside, and then attached to, the hut he built. He says the Borough Council agreed to leave it, but it shouldn’t.

In this case the flag is not flying as a symbol of the nation, but as a symbol of Lambiase’s desire to maintain a claim to the beach he never had a right to make in the first place.

He has used the flag as a way to question the patriotism of a neighbor who spoke out against the inappropriate action he took in building his tiki hut. By doing that, Lambiase joins the long list of people who seek to defend what they have done wrong by wrapping themselves in the flag.

Whether he realizes it or not, what Lambiase is doing actually diminishes the symbol he otherwise claims to revere, and his action needs to be recognized as such.

The flag is supposed to stand for — in the words of John Adams — "A government of laws, and not of men."

When people are allowed to turn the flag to their own purposes, they violate the very principles the flag is supposed to represent.

That’s how symbols lose their meaning, and now is certainly not the time for that.