Off topic: Flag Day
Posted by: BJAXSON <BJAXSON@...>
Wednesday, June 14, is Flag Day in the USA. I hope the article that follows
will encourage you to break out Old Glory on this special day.
Flag Day Time to Show America's True Colors
Monday June 12, 2000
By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
and fired the shot heard round the world.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
It had the humblest of beginnings, like the country it symbolizes.
Just 13 stars and 13 stripes, red, white and blue, but oh how it rippled
proudly in the free wind.
It had grown just a little, to 15 stars and 15 stripes, when it raggedly
clung to the mast above Fort McHenry. Oh, can't you just see that
star-spangled symbol as it endured the British cannonade, and inspired
Francis Scott Key to pen his immortal words.
It was there to lead the fight in the Argonne of World War I, grown now to
represent a mighty nation with its 48 stars. The stripes stayed at 13, to
remind its followers of their beginnings.
A few Marines raised it on Suribachi, where it flew over the vanquished
Japanese a quarter-century later. It was there again along the 38th Parallel
of Korea, and Hamburger Hill in Vietnam, and even in the Kuwaiti desert,
always the symbol of right, whether its country made all the right moves or
not.
Over the two-plus centuries of its life, it has draped the coffins of
America's mightiest leaders and simplest soldiers, giving of its reverent
warmth equally to both.
It has lowered to half-staff in times of national sadness, risen to full
height on sunny July Fourths, and streamed proudly from the eaves of rooftops
across the land.
It has also been abused by those who have railed against the establishment,
and would blame the colors for the actions of a few of its leaders. It's been
stomped on in the streets, burned at public rallies and spit upon by those it
loved. Being the symbol of a most powerful nation, filled with good and evil,
it has taken the brunt of anger from those who dissent.
The country over which it flies is not perfect. There is, in fact, no perfect
country or flag, for there are no perfect people.
But it asks that the values and the creed for which it stands receive the
respect they deserve. Democracy, the great experiment, may not be the
solution to human ills, but no flag has flown over a better nation.
The flag wants not to be worn as a bathing suit, or a dirty T-shirt, but to
be flown as our founders intended when they adopted it way back in 1777.
"As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my
idea of democracy." That was Abraham Lincoln, who was taken to his rest
beneath the flag of the country he loved so much.
Wednesday is our nation's annual Flag Day, and it will be noticed by only a
few.
But how many of us, who take so much for granted, would notice if it were
yanked from our midst, and replaced with the standard of tyranny?
The flag represents the hope that all Americans will work on the many flaws
that still exist, but it would serve to remind them on Flag Day not to
forget:
Through all the pain of a nation's history, across the span of time with its
rights and wrongs, they can still pledge allegiance to the flag.
And to the Republic for which it stands.
from The Victoria (TX) Advocate, by Jim Bishop
Buck