Does Daniel Wheeler of the Citizens Flag Alliance really expect us to believe that “the flag is the greatest training aid we have to teach our children patriotism,” or that “the greatest tragedy every time a flag is burned . . . is the disrespect it teaches our children”? (Voice of the people, May 29). The truth is that patriotism is learned at home and in the classroom, day by day. The truth is that patriotism is a personal thing brought home to us by things like rows of cemetery markers, a service medal found in the back of a parent’s dresser drawer, the story of what happened to Aunt Betty or Uncle Bill, the willingness of adults to speak of their beliefs and a realization that “freedom isn’t free.”
The flag is the symbol of that, not the substance.
Mr. Wheeler decries the 1989 ruling of the Supreme Court that struck down state laws protecting the flag. The ruling should give us pause, but we can do much better than yearn for a national flag law. Instead we should remember that the 10th Amendment to our Constitution says that powers not given to the central government are “reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
If ever there was an idea, a national asset, that belonged to “the people,” it is patriotism in all its parts. We are its caretakers, one by one, and we cannot rightly abrogate any of that job to mere laws.
The truth is that a flag is only a handful of cotton, and no child’s sense of patriotism properly taught can be diminished by burning a flag. If we are truly as concerned about our children as Mr. Wheeler thinks we should be, then we should look beyond the occasional burning and ask what lesson we teach by the growing absence of the flag from the fronts of our houses on each successive Memorial Day.
