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My thing about the flag is, for me, it represents all those who have served this country. Not just the combat vets, but all the others who at one point or another wrote a blank check to the people of this country, all the peoples of this country regardless of color, race, sex, or religion; to serve them up to and including with their life. To protect it against all enemies foreign or domestic. 

It is too bad in my mind so many people disrespect such a thing. We have the freedoms to disrespect the flag thanks to those who serve. I have the freedom to Rant thanks to these men and women. I have the freedom to be me because of them.

I look on the flag like the Old Johnny Cash song Ragged Old Flag as seen here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfzJ8UBr-c0

I cringed when the football player refused to stand. His reasons were his own and he had the right to refuse thanks to all those men and women who went before him and served which granted him the right to refuse to stand. I still cringed. How many people have served in this country so he could do such a thing?

I firmly believe everyone in this country should serve at one point or another. Yes, in the military. I firmly believe it does a young man or woman good to find themselves a part of something else as far from home as they can be sent. To have to depend on themselves without the safety net of their family. To learn to trust themselves and the ones around them when things get bad.

I also wish in my heart of hearts our flag no longer flew in such countries as Afghanistan where we have sent our children who have taken up the call. Where we have been now ever since the late eighties. We won a World War in four years. I still don’t understand why we are still in a country 32 years after we first entered it. Think about that for a minute. 32 years our flag has flown on foreign soil. We need to bring it home. To concentrate our efforts on the home front for a change. Just saying.

I like our flag. I like what it stands for. Freedom in case you forgot. Something so many of us seem to have forgotten. We listen as others try to take our freedoms away. Challenge us over the color of our skin. I have endured the racial insults of others directed at me because I am white more now than in the sixties when racial slurs were the norm. Seems it is okay now to be a racist, as long as it’s a white man you hate. 

In case you’re interested, such slurs and the ability to holler them are a part of the first amendment. One of our freedoms most have no clue about. How many of us born here can pass the citizens test? How many know what the flag stands for? Why its red, white, and blue? If you don’t know you should Google it. 

So many freedoms we take for granted are exemplified in our flag. The right to bear arms one of those. No one wants to invade the United States because so many of us own guns. Honestly, if gun owners in this country were really a problem we would know since they own a trillion rounds of ammunition. Truthfully, I never cared about owning an AR-15 until I was told I couldn’t. Now I want one.

See, in this country when you start to take away rights you should get angry. You should stand up and say something. So here I am standing up and saying something. It may be your right to disrespect the American flag, but it is my right to fly it and do so with honor and pride. My flag may upset many of you. May make you scream I am disrespecting your rights. You may even want me to take it down because it offends you.

Let me make this as plain as I can. Suck it up – buttercup. I will fly this flag to the day I die. Then I hope they lay one across my coffin. Period. End of sentence.

I’m Ross, The Editor-in-Chief at The Pyrateheart Press and I’m out.