Aerion

The big freaking deal is this. Korea is considered a hardship tour of duty. It is considered a war zone and you can't take your family there. That soldier is there risking his life and away from his family to protect the South Koreans from from a regieme that would probably invade their country the day after we leave. It makes me want to cry that those people feel the way they do about our presence there.

I think I'll write my congressman and tell him we should give those stupid South Koreans their wish and leave.

Aerion

Agreed!

beyelzu

Let see, the country is a separate entity from its people. I can hate say the ussr and not hate all russians.


Secondly, that I was quoting seemed to be obvious to other people.

beyelzu

fwiw, I dont think everyone that I disagree with is anti american. for instance. I disagree with alot of what you say Red Dave, but I do think that you want America to be a better nation.


BTW I also think that people that the symbol you mention is pretty disgusting. Supporting killing people for no reason is stupid.

abe smith

Samuel Johnson (whose opinions while witty are of course no more valid than anyone else's) opined "Patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels." And of course idolatry of the Flag or of anything else violates the Second-of-the-Ten Commandment.
Interesting that Flag-Idolators are often Decalog Idolators and also Death Penalists. This latter sentence may not be statistically
factual.

Melkor

I served, voluntarily, for squat pay, crappy food, crowded living conditions, almost no sleep sometimes for days on end, grueling working hours, and the threat of harsh, swift punishment hanging over my head for the slightest infraction, in the United States Navy.

I put up with all that crap (and more) because I have an appreciation for what the flag of the United States symbolizes to me and to many others. It represents freedoms and other abstract concepts that were apparently very important to many, many people, because many willingly put themselves into positions that ended up resulting in them being buried in military cemetaries in order to defend those concepts.

I don't agree with most of what the current administration is doing, and I didn't agree with most of what the last administration did either.

Every day I see our freedoms being eroded away, and when I hear talk about trying to make it illegal to "deface" the flag of the United States, it disappoints me greatly.

When I see someone burning the flag, it angers me to see the symbol of what I put my own life on the line to defend being destroyed.

But pass an amendment banning flag defacement and I won't care two shits if you burn the flag, because it will at that moment cease to represent those freedoms, because the most important of which will have been removed.

I don't see how those in support of such an amendment don't see the irony of their position. Ban flag defacement and I'll burn a flag a day until they carry me off.

It's just cloth, without the freedom it was intended to represent. Meaningless if you make it stand for state oppression and government out of control.

elwoodblues

Well said.

Ab_Normal

Can I get that on a bumper sticker?


:notworthy :notworthy
My husband did his time in the Army (for the college money) and he always says, "I swore my oath to uphold the Constitution."

Koiyotnik

Better make that uniquely North American, at least. It is perfectly legal to burn the Canadian flag.

I'm mixed on this issue, though. On one hand, a flag is a recognizable symbol of a nation. On the other, it is only that, a material symbol, and not the divine incarnation of said nation's principles.

Oresta

Melkor, may your tribe increase. :notworthy