Last Straw

The Last Straw:

I'm a pretty patient and understanding fellow, really. I try to live by the injunction against juding others' sins -- as opposed to their crimes, which I feel entirely competent to judge. I try not to condemn people for doing things I might well do myself, and I try to understand that some others have other moral structures that might -- in some circumstances -- be right even though I don't agree with them.

So we saw all those Mexican flags at the big marches, and it bugs me like it bugs a lot of people. But I think to myself: "Well, and what if it were the Confederate flag? A lot of people don't want to see that anywhere, but it means different things to me than it does to others. Maybe that's what's going on here; and Kaus said it was pleasant and happy, so maybe that's all it is."

Then, we saw the Mexican flag flown OVER the American flag, inverted. I thought: "That's really pushing it, bud -- and I would feel that way even if it were the Confederate flag. On the other hand, we did just have a big thing about the importance of free speech, even offensive free speech, with those Muhammad cartoons. So, if I'm going to be true to the principles at hand, I have to permit this -- even if it is a desecration."

Now, we see the American flag banned at American schools.

I know there's been some chaos, particularly last week's flag burnings, in which Mexican flags were destroyed after they were raised above the US flag. I realize that schools have to maintain discipline.

Nevertheless, we've reached the end of my tolerance.

This is America, and a lot of Americans have fought for that flag. Our kids ought to be able to fly it. The school's place is not to ban the display, but to teach it, and to require the proper forms, as recorded in the United States Marine Corps Flag Manual. When I was a boy, we were taught to raise and lower, and correctly fold, the flag. Particularly good students were honored by being allowed to do it for the school, one week out of their career.

If school discipline is being troubled by the presence of flags, the solution is to enforce those proper forms:

When flags of two or more nations are displayed, they are to be flown from separate staffs of the same height. When the President directs that the flag be flown at half-staff at military facilities and naval vessels and stations abroad, it will be so flown whether or not the flag of another nation is flown full-staff alongside the flag of the United States of America. The national flag, if required, will be displayed, on the right (the flag's own right) of all others. The national flags of other nations shall be displayed, right to left, in the alphabetical order of the names of the nations in the English language.

There are several lessons encoded in that paragraph. The American flag has precedence here. The English language has precedence here. The honor of our flag cannot be harmed by being displayed below another flag, provided that it has been properly ordered: for mourning the glorious dead adds to, rather than detracts from, the honor of a man or a nation.

Every American student ought to learn those lessons. They are the forms endorsed by our military, chief defender of our nation's honor and her traditions. These limits are not limits, but liberations: for they establish the forms with which anyone, of any nation, may come here and become fully and completely an American. Do but these little things, and we will embrace you as a brother in a way that no other nation on earth ever will. Do them not, and you will forever remain an alien.