Tag Archives: American flag

The Flag, Just A Holiday Decoration!

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Writing this blog is beginning to give me hives. I guess I’m just allergic to stupid people.

The self-proclaimed dictator of the Chestnut Place Homeowners Association in Murray, Utah, says she’s tired of looking at American flags and she’s beginning to fine homeowners who display them.

You think I’m making this stuff up? Come on, guys! You know I’m not.

HOA president Lyn Steinbergen says the flag is only a holiday decoration and needs to come down after the ‘holiday.’ Mz. Steinbergen, you’re obviously an ignoramus when it comes to knowledge about the American flag and whether or not the display of the flag is covered under multiple state and Supreme Court decisions. Yes, I’m prejudiced against your mindless stance because I have a number of family members who gave their lives for that flag. They also gave their lives to protect your right to be an idiot. If you honestly think it’s merely a holiday decoration then I brand you a brainless neighborhood ditz who deserves to be recalled as soon as enough signatures are collected.

(link to story in the Washington Times)

Additional note: Deborah Goonan is so sharp. She’s always miles ahead of me on updates.

(update on flag dispute)

 

 

No Frickin’ Flags Here!

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What is it that Homeowners Associations hate so much about the American flag? Well, I take that back, fascism and American patriotism are pretty much at odds.

Angie Hildebrandt, a condo owner, is being assessed daily fines because she flies her flag outside her home at the Southdale Gardens Condominium Association in Edina, Minnesota. Her two sons are in the military and every generation in her family has fought in wars on behalf of America. Her first flag was stolen. Overnight someone paid a visit to her home and ripped her flag to shreds.

What a nice place to live, Southdale Gardens. Perhaps there’s a certain red, white and black flag you’d like as your community symbol.

Reflections on Flags

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Flag etiquette is a touchy subject in this country. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that burning the American Flag is a protected form of speech under the First Amendment. Still, we hear calls from elected politicians that displaying the Confederate Flag is not protected speech.

The beginning of the Confederate War was never about slavery, it was about the massive tax burden being imposed by the North against southern businessmen. The slavery issue arose two years into the Civil War and at that point the Stars and Bars and slavery were forever linked.

But the original flag, the one that George Washington commissioned, was never about slavery, either. It was about this country’s brash argument that it wanted to be free from foreign rule and oppressive taxes. Yes, George Washington owned slaves. So did many others of the country’s founders. So did the Cherokee Indians, for that matter.

So how is the American Flag any less a symbol of slavery than the Confederate Flag? The two flags are just red, white and blue pieces of cloth stitched together. And now professional rabble rousers are insisting that anything Red, White and Blue be torn down and assigned to the dustbins of history.

The two flags represent culture. There are good and bad things in every culture. But believing that Americans are too stupid to make up their own minds about important cultural issues is Political Correctness run amok.

Flee from political correctness, that apple barrel of hypocrisy and prevarication which is sitting and fermenting and waiting to poison the discussion and the common sense that most Americans have.

Now, we have a very real situation taking place in a Southern Colorado neighborhood. A Hispanic man hung a flag upside down as a show of disrespect because of the racism he feels in his community. He says he feels harassed by the HOA’s management company.

Whew! Don’t we all?

There’s a craziness afoot in American neighborhoods. There’s an intolerance that’s as insidious as a cluster of cancer cells. Let’s get rid of it. Leave the flags alone. Leave our First Amendment alone. If someone has the bad taste to display a flag improperly, just walk away and let him be. What a nice place this would be if we just gave each other some space. Forgive, forget, and get on with life.

(link to El Paso County flag story)

 

A Rare Retreat By An HOA

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An HOA apologize to someone it’s wronged? When pigs fly!

But that’s exactly what happened when the Fieldstone Homeowners Association ticketed an 81 year old Navy veteran for using the American flag as an “inappropriate curtain.”

When the Post Falls American Legion announced it would support the vet’s right to display the flag from inside his home, the HOA board quickly crawled back down its hole, saying it would rescind the violation and even apologize to the veteran.

Yes, some pigs can fly. Not often. But it’s a beautiful sight to see.

(link to Coeur d’Alene Press)

 

Hanging The Flag

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Upside down flagA neighborhood in Pendleton, Oregon is furious with a homeowner who’s begun flying his flag upside down as a protest against President Barack Obama. The upside down flag is recognized internationally as a symbol of distress.

Oregon has long been one of the most left-leaning states in the country and it’s full of Homeowners Associations. The surprising thing is that an Oregon neighborhood is protesting any display of the American flag at all, right side up or upside down. While this blogger takes no public position, left or right, on politics, he still believes that American citizens have a Constitutional right to Freedom of Speech. And historically that means freedom of expression, even if the way a belief is expressed nauseates others.

We’ll see what happens in this case. But this kind of display of the American flag usually ends up in lawsuits, liens, foreclosures, or even violence.

Our Supreme Court has recognized that citizens have a right to desecrate Old Glory. That couldn’t happen in some countries. I find it interesting that in certain totalitarian regimes like Cuba it’s impossible to fly the flag upside down. It looks the same either way. That has to have been an intentional design by a country that didn’t want its citizens putting out calls of distress.

If an official flag is ever designed to fly over HOA Amerika it will also have to have a design that can’t be flown upside down, sort of like the all-white flag of surrender.

Just a few random musings on a dull afternoon.

http://tinyurl.com/lf2eq8a

original source:

http://seattle.cbslocal.com/2013/06/03/oregon-man-flying-american-flag-upside-down-to-protest-obama-presidency/