****UPDATED****
Because some people are unmoved when they find themselves in a hole, and simply keep digging:
I was over at one of my new favorite sites earlier today, and caught an eye full of "I can't believe that they actually said that." on a thread about the DNC throwing away all the flags after their combination pep-rally and circle jerk in Denver two weeks ago.
First, the "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?":
Outlaw 13, do you really fight for a flag? Surely what you fight for are things like family and loved ones, ideals you believe in.
Flags are inanimate objects, they don’t need to be defended and aren’t worth killing for. Normally in our society when people get all worked up over material things like cars and money and clothes we say they’re superficial, that they have their priorities wrong. How is a flag different?
And my reply, even though he wasn't talking to me:
Rusty, once again, you demonstrate enough reasoning to get to your point, but then you stop, I believe disingenuously, because completing it would bring you to the realization that you are defending the indefensible.
We do fight for ideals like family, loved ones, the Constitution and all the promise that it portends…but symbols and images, like words, have meaning and power. Just like a picture being worth a thousand words, a symbol says so many things without being a word or ideal at all. The flag is just such a symbol, and people have known this for centuries. There is a reason why we know Betsy Ross’s name. There is a reason why the national anthem is The Star Spangled Banner, and it has the stirring line “…was proof through the night that the flag was still there.” There is a reason why there is a section of the United States Code dedicated to it, and there is a reason why it is the subject of so many ceremonies of significance.
It symbolizes US. The United States of America. The nation that changed the game, politically speaking. The nation that other nations STILL, Obama’s self-serving statements to the contrary, is respected by persons world wide, and feared by tyrants worldwide. The flag is the embodiment of the our nation’s constant march toward rising above the worst that the human condition has to offer, and as such, you would be hard-pressed to find any other inanimate object that so many people have willingly shed their own blood and sacrificed their own lives to defend. I can guarantee you that you cannot come up with another symbol/inanimate object outside of religion that has inspired more people. That is why its care and treatment is enshrined in law, and those who would disrespect it cause so much controversy.
And THAT is why it is different from cars, and clothes, and money.
Why can't they see that their "dissent" and "questioning authority" is pretty hollow when they demonstrate that they have no understanding of what they are "dissenting" from or "questioning"? It hurts me deeply when we have to explain to our fellow citizens what being American means.
And round two:
@ “Just like a picture being worth a thousand words, a symbol says so many things without being a word or ideal at all. The flag is just such a symbol[…]”
That’s pretty much my point. The flag is a symbol. One of them can go up in flames but the ideas it represents remain intact.
I don’t know where any of you stand on anti-flag desecration laws but for me that stuff’s beyond the pale for exactly this reason. They desecrate the ideals of our country (free speech) to protect the symbol of those ideals.
And my reply:
That’s pretty much my point. The flag is a symbol. One of them can go up in flames but the ideas it represents remain intact.
Again, missing something important. For those who fight, for those who find themselves under fire, in a landscape of sound, fury, smoke, and explosions, who may involuntarily banish all other thoughts from their heads other than how to stay alive and “What am I doing here?” can be galvanized in an instant, with just a glimpse of that symbol, can do extraordinary things, can ignore danger and wounds that would otherwise drop them to their knees or their back, because that symbol communicated those ideals in but a second. Assuming it is “just” a symbol, and nothing more is an insult to every person who has had a moment like the one I just described, and especially to those who have come home, enshrouded in silence and that symbol, to be laid to rest in gardens of stone.
I don’t know where any of you stand on anti-flag desecration laws but for me that stuff’s beyond the pale for exactly this reason. They desecrate the ideals of our country (free speech) to protect the symbol of those ideals.
I think that there is something fatally ironic about living out your life in freedom paid for in blood under those who rallied under that symbol, and paying homage to that legacy by desecrating that symbol with flame and a contemptuous attitude. Having said that, I would like to see Congress address an awful lot of things before focusing on “anti-flag desecration” laws, but unless or until such legislation is debated and passed, I am perfectly willing to look the other way as men and women who have made such sacrifices “express their displeasure”, even in unpleasant physical ways, with those among us who have problems with adequately expressing their gratitude for their sacrifices. After all, freedom of expression cuts both ways, does it not?
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