What @holes! Messing with a 90-year old veteran who put his life on the line for the flag and all it represents is despicable. Agreed! However, your conclusion that a liberal is at fault is wholly speculative; thus I am inclined to engage in some speculation of my own. You assume that liberals are anti-American, anti-flag, and anti-freedom of expression. What crap. The flag and the honor and glory it represents belongs to all of us. Liberals have died on the field of battle next to conservatives, they have served on factory floors and in the halls of Congress side by side with conservatives. Just because I fly a flag and my neighbor doesn't certainly does not make me more American or more conservative than they. You're on a very slippery slope here... Secondly, perhaps you're experiencing cognitive dissonance arising from a tendency to wrap yourself in a flag and be manipulated like a storm trooper by FreedomWorks and other SC or TX secessionist groups on one hand, and your consciousness (as the former blue jeaned and tie-dyed liberal you claim you were) of the perils of extreme nationalism and seditious fervor and the excesses historically carried out by the state (or subgroups within) who expropriate flags, slogans, and other elements of national identity and use them to manipulate the consciousness of the vulnerable and weak-minded masses. That's not elitism talking; it's the lessons of history speaking. "Sieg Heil!" Third, while liberals who are freed from the cognitive constraints of a conservative weltanschauung are certainly more often at the forefront of creative, innovative, and avid expression, to assume they are the "aesthetic police" in society is fallacious. I know of plenty deeply conservative places in this country where freedom of expression is not allowed, policed quite heavily, and where students aren't even allowed to dance. Clearly, America has its own brand of Taliban. Finally, conservatives tend to castigate the ACLU as an anti-Christian, liberal
extremist organization. But the ACLU would be the first in line to stand up for this 90 year old veteran's right to freedom of expression by virtue of display of the flag. The ACLU would also stand up for a naturalized Mexican immigrant's right to fly a Mexican flag on Sept. 16, or a skinhead's right to hang the flag of the Third Reich in his window. Frankly, I support the right of all to do so. Libertarians certainly should support it, unless they subscribe to a narrow and selective conception of liberty and freedom. I wonder though, would conservatives support the same (Perhaps, if the flag were the Dixie stars and bars, but likely not the Mexican flag)? Clearly, your specualtion that the "aesthetic police-person" in this incident is a liberal holds no weight whatsoever and is either it is a product of flawed logic, mean-spiritedness, some other dysfunction, or a combination of all. : ) |
