Flying the Flag

My dear spouse yesterday reminded me that we had utterly failed to fly the flag for Veterans Day. I was deeply chagrined, as I enjoy flying the colors for every appropriate holiday so long as we are in town. We fly the flag because it represents our feelings towards this country we call home. We are truly grateful to be citizens of the United States of America, and flying the flag is an appropriate expression of that citizenship.

That's why this particular story raises my blood pressure a few notches.

Understand, however, that it is not the actions of the school administrators involved with this incident that have me seeing red. They acted on information that they possessed and experiences that they had recently had with the flying of a Mexican flag during Cinco de Mayo (according to at least one account), and decided to ban the adornment out of safety concerns for their students. It was probably a reflexive reaction to a situation and driven at least partially by a desire to not have any child's blood on their hands. I can understand the sentiment.

What leaves me short of breath in this case is the need for making such a decision in the first place.

If you read my post from yesterday, wherein I honored my Dad as part of my Veterans Day celebration, then you understand how I feel about this country. Displaying an American flag on American soil is fundamentally no different from displaying any given nation's flag on their own soil. It is, in fact, encouraged in most countries to display the banner of their homeland, often in ways far more aggressive and ostentatious than we do here in the United States. Certainly it was that way in Guatemala, and I have seen plenty of photographic evidence from other countries as well.

Citizenship 101 would also indicate that, even if you choose to honor the country of your birth and fly a flag from any other nation, say, Mexico as an example, then that flag should always be flown underneath the Stars and Stripes to demonstrate that you recognize the United States as your country of choice and the nation to which you owe your circumstances, including the opportunity to earn a living and provide for your needs and those of your family.

I myself come from a background that is heavily English and German in origin. I do not, however, feel any overwhelming urge to fly the flags of either nation here at home. I am grateful for the heritage, and may even try to emulate certain of their traditions in my own life, but I owe them no other allegiance whatsoever.

My feelings can best be summed up thus: Flying any other nation's flag above the Stars and Stripes indicates to me that you do not belong in this country, or, at the very least, do not appreciate being here. And for those who simply hate the United States, the exits are clearly marked and always open.

It really is that simple.

I try to be a tolerant man. I have no ingrained or deep-rooted prejudices against any race or nationality of which I am aware. If I have a lack of tolerance, it is mostly reserved for those people who lay claim to living and working in this country, while clearly despising everything else that this country represents, including those most basic of rights wherein we may freely express our thoughts and opinions, and worship as we see fit. If these things make you uncomfortable, you ought not to be here.

So the next time you see a kid riding a bike with an American flag attached, remind yourself to not only be grateful that we have such a privilege, but that we should jealously defend that privilege when suffering the mockery and scorn that so many other nations level at us when displaying such patriotism.

Don't just tell me you want to live here.

Prove it.

Newsweek Thought Piece

Fareed Zakaria, writing for Newsweek, has created a thought-provoking essay that is sure to have a polarizing effect on its readers. It's called "The Post-American World," and it tries to analyze the socio-political influences of the United States in comparison with the rest of the world.

I say "thought-provoking" because he makes some valid points along the way. It isn't so much that the United States is necessarily declining in influence, but rather that other countries are rising. This is perhaps the central theme of Zakaria's essay and it's meant to demonstrate that the U. S. must "globalize" if it wishes to remain a key player in world affairs.

It also, unfortunately, smacks of the sort of "new world order" thinking that ultimately diminishes our sovereignty as a nation and subjects us to the whims of the rest of the world.

Read it for yourself, though. I suspect reactions will run pretty much along party and ideological lines. As a somewhat moderate conservative, I can see those valid points and agree with much of his analysis. I also believe, however, that some of his base assumptions are incorrect. He points, for example, to U. S. carmakers having more employees in Canada than in the United States, at least partly because Canadian health-care costs are lower. The implication would be that the United States should be adopting a health-care system similar to Canada's if we wish to remain a viable competitor. What he fails to mention, however, is that Canada's socialized health-care system is also fundamentally flawed; the waiting lists to see key specialists alone would sound a death-knell to many who need critical care in a timely manner. It's not that they have bad doctors. It's that they don't have enough doctors who are willing to accept the salaries to which they are mandated by the state. Our doctors are expensive, but there's a market that supports them and enables us to have immediate access to the right care. These are over-simplified arguments, but useful for the discussion at hand.

Zakaria does a pretty good job of pointing out that, dangerous as today's world is, it's somewhat less violent overall than it was a few decades ago. He points out the massive losses of life during conflicts in Vietnam, Iran and Iraq, and Cambodia. With this data he attempts to quell a rising feeling of uneasiness that many Americans (Woody included) have had regarding the continuing states of war and terrorism that permeate today's political landscape. His suggestion is that we need to get along more with our worldly neighbors (NWO thinking) and accept their places at our side as allies. He fears that our political leadership (he specifically mentions McCain in this train of thought) are too willing to buy into the next Cold War. He downplays such things as nuclear proliferation as if to lead us to believe that such things are of no more concern in our world.

Here I disagree vehemently with Zakaria. It is precisely such things as nuclear proliferation and the rise of global terrorism that should make us wary of such powers as North Korea, Russia, and especially China. It's one thing to encourage trade with "neighbors" like these. It is another to simply trust them not to take their aggressions out on us just because we no longer hold the position of "world leader" that Zakaria feels we've lost. From a standpoint of safety and security, we can never take our eyes off of these nations. We do so at our own peril. I have felt this way ever since someone once declared that we had "won" the original Cold War. We "won" nothing. Other nations gained a measure of independence, and many communist regimes fell. But there can be no declared "winner" when the ability to wipe out an enemy is still in the hands of politicians who clearly do not like the United States.

As I say, read the whole thing. Some of it I agree with, some of it I obviously don't. We may not have the largest Ferris wheel in the world, or even the largest mall. We don't need to have these things to be leaders of freedom and democratic thinking in the world today. We just need to have unshakeable standards, and live them.