You Stole my Flag

Fresh crisis ideas welcome. No return on empties.

Jack wrote this in June, 2006:

Not too many decades ago,

a person who venerated the ideals enshrined in the US Constitution and

respected the ideas incorporated there, and loved this land,

while recognizing human weakness and failure,

could proudly fly and salute the stars and bars.

Today that banner’s been stolen.  

The flag of the US, today, has come to mean that the person flying it believes in:

• An America with the power and will to attack sovereign nations without being attacked,
• A population cheering for a chief executive who pre-empts the powers of the US Congress,
• A country where due process does not exist,
• A country burgeoning with prisons filled with prisoners convicted of crimes without victims.

I will not fly that flag.

I will not salute that flag and what it’s come to mean.

I refuse to respect those who do.

Those who love what the stars and bars have come to represent should carefully fold that banner along with what it once meant to those who venerated it.   Folded as tradition suggests, it should be burned, the ashes buried with the ashes of the US Constitution.

Flag wavers of today are waving the wrong banner.  The one at the top of this entry’s far more appropriate for them.   (Note from Jeanne: I no longer know which photo he chose for this blog, so I picked this one).

Jack