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Flags were selling out the first day and since September 11th everything from flag shirts to flag hats and decals and even tatoos have been selling faster than merchants can stock them.
Some people have even been stealing flags.
It is amusing to see how they're flying. Some are hanging from windows (which is not the proper way to fly a flag) and some are hanging them on the ground. Others leave them up in the rain. But everyone wants one. I had a flag flying before the attack so I simply left it up but fly mine for an entirely different reason. As a veteran I fly mine for my comrades who never came home because they made the ultimate sacrifice. At Veterans Day parades I carry my father-in-laws folded flag, the one they drapped over his casket.
The flag is important because it is a symbol of faith for people in their country. It was a symbol which everyone wanted to fly in WWII at the same time we were herding 110,000 Japanese-Americans into internment camps.
(only 1/3rd were not American citizens)
People fly the flag when their military bombs and kills the enemy. It is for them a sign of their patriotism. I don't need a flag to tell me how to be patriotic. I'm patriotic because I teach people about war and about peace. I tell them about the smell. The first thing a soldier recognizes in war is the smell. It is a smell like you have never smelled before. It is overpowering and sickening and the stench doesn't go away. Even years later you can smell death. The flag, for me, is a reminder that peace, NOT war, is the highest form of patriotism.
The flag is not a document. The Constitution is the document which determines our democracy but the Bill of Rights is the real contract with America to provide basic liberty to everyone. The flag is never more important than the Bill of Rights nor can it's glorification ever excuse abuses of power and military adventures.
TheGolem http://pnews.org/
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