Two recent stories struck me--one from each coast.
In San Diego recently, Malia Fontana, a sophomore at Fallbrook High School, received a disciplinary letter for displaying a small american flag in her back pocket.
This small bit of personal expression resulted in no hysteria, no outbursts or further excitement from her fellow students at Fallbrook--just the flag's confiscation by an alert security guard and a letter of reprimand, which will remain in her file until six months after her graduation. This insert will blemish an otherwise exemplary record.
Fearful school officials acted in this draconian fashion as a result, no doubt, of the ferment at nearby Oceanside high school, where the display of all flags was banned as the result of tensions arising from the pending immigration legislation in Washington.
On the other side of a distaff america, in Manhattan, as workers prepare the Deutsche Bank for demolition at Ground Zero, hundreds of human bone fragments have been found on its roof--the mortal remains of those innocents who perished on 9/11--the victims of Islamist terror.
I am struck by the confluence of three issues here. We have school officials confiscating our flag, the flag of the United States of america, for no good reason, save fear, from a girl with no intent other than a small bit self expression and love of country--a freedom for which this flag and country were created.
Secondly, the officials in Oceanside, who outlawed the display of any flags, including our own, failed to grasp the simple fact that the flags were not to blame for the behavior, but were merely the easy target. Rather than attack the causes of the violent expression and to discipline the unruly at the root of the problem, the school officials took the easy and cowardly way out of the dilemma and simply banned the flags--the all too visible and innocent symbols.
and lastly, the bones constitute, on the microscopic scale, the warp and woof of our flag, with the weave made up of the hundreds of thousands of sailors, soldiers, fliers, Marines and civilians who have paid, in blood and treasure, the interest on the loan of freedom bequeathed us, from 1775 until today.
This loan, to which is appended a significant interest, is compounded with regularity. Locations for payment are attached to the original loan and the names of participants are figured in the accrual.
When you look closely at our flag, under the microscope at the molecular level, things come into focus, and locations and people appear--Monmouth, Crispus attucks, Old Ironsides, John Beaver, Eddie Rickenbacker, Earle Burtis, Jimmy Doolittle, USS Saratoga, Task Force Smith, LZ X-Ray and 9/11, among many, many others.
and the binding energy for all the threads and fibers is human blood and sinew--that of our fathers and mothers, our brothers and sisters--just like the remains found on the roof top of the Deutsche Bank in the last few days--and those that will continue to be found in lower Manhattan, in the ice fields, on the islands in the Pacific and wherever americans have died for the right of Malia Fontana to carry a small american flag to a public school in her back pocket.
Not too long ago, CBS News trumpeted a vast study of great import from the Templeton Foundation, which showed that heart patients showed no significant palliative effects when strangers prayed for their recovery. Others would disagree, myself included, but CBS has an agenda, which must be followed.
But there is something intrinsic in our flag which cannot be measured and which defies the bar graphs, pie charts and Venn diagrams routinely offered in Harvard studies.
The sight of our flag under attack caused Francis Scott Key to pen the National anthem.
arthur Macarthur grabbed an outsize american flag and ran to the top of Missionary Ridge with it--Union forces saw this act of bravery, the flag and immediately raced behind him, seizing the ridge and victory, after many failed attempts.
On Iwo Jima, when the US flag was raised atop Mt. Suribachi, an immediate cheer erupted from the hard pressed Marines, which swept the shell torn island.
at Dachau, the inmates wept when the US flag was spotted waving from the vehicles which broke down the gates of their terror, ending their incarceration and bringing final freedom.
and today, grown men tear up at the sight of Old Glory combined with the strains of the Star Spangled Banner at football games across america.
We are losing the battle of america when this precious living flag is denied to our children by those who have looked at the stars, the stripes and the red blood of her heroes and refuse to see the cherished sacrifice within the weave.
The lazy cynical caitiffs and short sighted progressive bureaucrats running our schools place the enforced mediocrity of a stunted socialist education with its amazing disappearing history far ahead of an understanding of the sacrifice and courage underpinning the survival of our nation. They have found, in their insulated blinkered indolence, that it is far simpler to ban the symbol of our collective honor than it is to teach values and respect to the hoodlums they allow to run freely in their halls of empty enlightenment.
With her small gesture, Malia Fontana is now bound in the fibers of our flag as surely as the remains on the roof of the Deutsche Bank.
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