thedrifter
07-03-06, 07:34 AM
Flag signifies all freedoms ---- including desecration
July 03,2006
John Wayne Liston
Monitor's photo editor
Back in 1991, I was a young Marine returning to Hawaii from duty in the first Gulf War. My family wasn’t there. I didn’t have a girlfriend. I was just a young man, alone.
All around me, though, returning Marines were being greeted with hugs and kisses from family and friends. Needless to say, I was still a little down, even the next day as we participated in a welcome-home parade.
As we marched through the streets, a little girl, maybe 7 or 8, broke from the crowds on the sidewalk and rushed toward me. Her hands were outstretched.
And there it was: a tiny American flag with a tiny pin on it, perfect for putting on our desert camouflage hats.
That small, immensely beautiful gesture instantly snapped me out of my funk. It was just a tiny scrap of red, white and blue paper, yet it meant everything to me. It stood not only for my sacrifice, but for the countless others who had served before me. It stood for our Constitution, our freedom, our Bill of Rights. I must have stared at that flag for hours that night, contemplating just what we had been through over there.
I still have that flag. It’s a little ragged now; it is paper, after all. But it still resides in its place of honor, pinned on a floppy desert hat on a shelf in my home.
I think of this story as I listen to the debate in Congress to amend our Constitution and prevent desecration of the flag, and I am saddened and angry.
People who want to burn our flag should be allowed to do just that.
We must — must — allow it. If we don’t, we are denying ourselves the very things hundreds of thousands of us have fought for over the centuries, like human rights for all. And freedom.
Especially freedom.
As always, the debate comes in an election year. You would think people would be fed up with politicians looking for the cheap electoral bounce. I am.
I’m so tired of the Bush Administration — which seems to have no objective other than making money for themselves and their friends — pulling our heartstrings to deflect our attention from their criminal behavior.
Our flag means the world to me. I am the son of Canadian immigrants, a first-generation American. I get goosebumps when I hear our National Anthem. When I watch our flag ripple in the breeze, I think of the ideals that form the cornerstones of this great nation — sacrifice, hard work, honor and freedom.
If we take away the freedom to burn our flag, we erode the very ideals that helped form our nation. And that turns our flag into nothing but a pretty piece of cloth.
Don’t misunderstand: I would never advocate dishonoring our flag in any way. But I would never deny anyone the right to do so. Consider Benjamin Franklin’s words, written in 1759: “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
Freedom and liberty are not easy. To be truly free, we must allow a man to speak his mind, to perform a symbolic act we find abhorrent. That is the true test of freedom. Our flag is the symbol of our actions.
We must hold our rights dearly. We cannot desecrate our Constitution, which defines us, in the name of defending the flag, a mere symbol, however important. To do so is to destroy the very meaning that makes that symbol worth defending in the first place.
I love my country, although I detest the abuses of the current administration. I will defend forever with my life and my honor the freedoms on which we were founded.
Thomas Jefferson said, “All tyranny needs to gain a good foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.”
It is time for Americans to stand and defend what makes our flag special, to defend the sacrifice and the blood spilled for real freedoms and ideals, not for a symbolic piece of cloth.
John Wayne Liston, photo editor of The Monitor, served in the U.S. Marine Corps from 1989 to 1993, serving in Hawaii, in Japan, and in Operation Desert Shield and Operation Desert Storm. To contact him, send e-mail to jliston@themonitor.com.
Ellie
July 03,2006
John Wayne Liston
Monitor's photo editor
Back in 1991, I was a young Marine returning to Hawaii from duty in the first Gulf War. My family wasn’t there. I didn’t have a girlfriend. I was just a young man, alone.
All around me, though, returning Marines were being greeted with hugs and kisses from family and friends. Needless to say, I was still a little down, even the next day as we participated in a welcome-home parade.
As we marched through the streets, a little girl, maybe 7 or 8, broke from the crowds on the sidewalk and rushed toward me. Her hands were outstretched.
And there it was: a tiny American flag with a tiny pin on it, perfect for putting on our desert camouflage hats.
That small, immensely beautiful gesture instantly snapped me out of my funk. It was just a tiny scrap of red, white and blue paper, yet it meant everything to me. It stood not only for my sacrifice, but for the countless others who had served before me. It stood for our Constitution, our freedom, our Bill of Rights. I must have stared at that flag for hours that night, contemplating just what we had been through over there.
I still have that flag. It’s a little ragged now; it is paper, after all. But it still resides in its place of honor, pinned on a floppy desert hat on a shelf in my home.
I think of this story as I listen to the debate in Congress to amend our Constitution and prevent desecration of the flag, and I am saddened and angry.
People who want to burn our flag should be allowed to do just that.
We must — must — allow it. If we don’t, we are denying ourselves the very things hundreds of thousands of us have fought for over the centuries, like human rights for all. And freedom.
Especially freedom.
As always, the debate comes in an election year. You would think people would be fed up with politicians looking for the cheap electoral bounce. I am.
I’m so tired of the Bush Administration — which seems to have no objective other than making money for themselves and their friends — pulling our heartstrings to deflect our attention from their criminal behavior.
Our flag means the world to me. I am the son of Canadian immigrants, a first-generation American. I get goosebumps when I hear our National Anthem. When I watch our flag ripple in the breeze, I think of the ideals that form the cornerstones of this great nation — sacrifice, hard work, honor and freedom.
If we take away the freedom to burn our flag, we erode the very ideals that helped form our nation. And that turns our flag into nothing but a pretty piece of cloth.
Don’t misunderstand: I would never advocate dishonoring our flag in any way. But I would never deny anyone the right to do so. Consider Benjamin Franklin’s words, written in 1759: “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
Freedom and liberty are not easy. To be truly free, we must allow a man to speak his mind, to perform a symbolic act we find abhorrent. That is the true test of freedom. Our flag is the symbol of our actions.
We must hold our rights dearly. We cannot desecrate our Constitution, which defines us, in the name of defending the flag, a mere symbol, however important. To do so is to destroy the very meaning that makes that symbol worth defending in the first place.
I love my country, although I detest the abuses of the current administration. I will defend forever with my life and my honor the freedoms on which we were founded.
Thomas Jefferson said, “All tyranny needs to gain a good foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.”
It is time for Americans to stand and defend what makes our flag special, to defend the sacrifice and the blood spilled for real freedoms and ideals, not for a symbolic piece of cloth.
John Wayne Liston, photo editor of The Monitor, served in the U.S. Marine Corps from 1989 to 1993, serving in Hawaii, in Japan, and in Operation Desert Shield and Operation Desert Storm. To contact him, send e-mail to jliston@themonitor.com.
Ellie