MORE ON THE FLAG

On this 4^th of July we in the US of A had more to contemplate than our nation’s birthday. Our space shuttle launched perfectly into the Florida skies. A pleasant display of fireworks it was. As we write of fireworks, we had those set off by the little dictator with the bad hair who contaminates Asia. Our President spoke with those sterling troops at Ft Bragg. But what WE will address for this moment, was a piece on Old Glory, by the formidable Christopher Hitchens, in the Wall Street Journal. Its title was: THE FLAG FETISH. How quaint, that he and/or WSJ chose the 4^th, for his diatribe.

Since Mr. Hitchens deigns to classify all of us who love and respect our beautiful flag as having a fetish, we can send him back to his pre-citizenship studies for some remedial training. He brandishes those studies as a crutch upon which he leans, to justify his rambling, obtuse piece on our flag. May we differ?

The content of the July 4^th piece on our flag displayed ignorance and the kind of convoluted reasoning so common today. Fetish? I have a fetish? My lifelong tendency to hang our flag or have a pole displaying it in my front yard is a fetish? Whether it was on frequent occasions during WW II in which my brother served and our parents involved me in its display; or through post 9/11, I had a fetish? How late for me to learn of such an ailment!

Using his own words we can identify how labored are the assertions of those, right and left, who look down upon those of us who display or otherwise “wave” the flag. How juvenile we are in the eyes of the omnipotent ones. Let’s look at his words.” It is precisely because the flag is important to some people that we must permit its trashing by others." Oh really? Don't we just love thinking about the 60's scum that did just that in behalf of the left here and afar, as they cheered our enemies? We let them get away with it then and it worked! Todays apoligists for our enemies are identical to those in that earlier time. You can almost smell their homogeneity.

Hitchens continues:"To legislate otherwise would be to enstate a taboo and that is EXACTLY

(my emphasis) what the First Amendment exists to forestall" A taboo? Where oh where in the name of judicial obtuseness were The Founders jousting with taboos? How can even the most crazed black robed lawyer find anti-tabooism in the Amendment he (and many others) pounds out of shape?

"Without ambiguities and ironies, it (the flag) would not be what it is--ambiguity and irony are just what the flag fetishists do not understand" So I am a fetishist who cheers taboos and who is too stupid to appreciate ambiguity and irony when I see it. THIS fetishist would ask where he finds ambiguity or irony in the photo of the Marines raising the flag over Suribachi; flying in a stiff wind at that makeshift Memorial in Pennslyvania for the gallant passengers and crew of Flight 93; in home after home after home in the weeks and months after 9/11; at base ops at Hickam field on December 7, 1941, or on military caskets in an endless stream from 1776 through THIS very July 4th? I see no ambiguity whatsoever. I see no irony save that the very flag that feeds my fetish, shields the likes of Mr Hitchens as he enjoys the fruits and protections of this great nation so permeated(as he says) with cowardice in its Congress. He labors over actions of Hillary. Hillary? What does SHE have to do with this subject?

If the 40 brave souls aboard Flight 93 could grade Hitchens rambling/idiotic
piece, would they give it an A or an F? For me it's not even close.