American Flag Blog

Well, here’s something new. In 2001, we had nineteen very determined Islamic terrorists slamming planes into buildings, killing thousands of Americans in the process. This month, we had one deranged Muslim man with a Palestinian flag and a copy of the Quran in his trunk slam his car into a Home Depot in Arizona.

On Sunday, December 18th at 6:00 AM, with Arabic music blasting from the radio, Ali Warrayat drove his car straight through the front doors and all the way to the paint aisle where he deliberately aimed for the flammable paint remover section. He then got out of his car and tossed a lit cigarette lighter onto the spilled liquid, igniting a blaze that resulted in more than one million dollars in damage. He was arrested in the parking lot. When police asked if he spoke English,Warrayat replied, "Do you speak Arabic?"

Warrayat is a former Jordanian and now a U.S. citizen and college student who is evidently very confused about his responsibilities as an American. Among items seized from his parent’s home, where he lives, was a computer on which they found images of Middle Eastern men holding Molotov Cocktails and a cartoon of dead children covered in blood with an unidentified Middle Eastern flag in the background.

According to Warrayat, the early morning attack had a dual purpose. First, as a former employee of this Home Depot, he was protesting the raise he didn’t get. And second, he was protesting the growing support among Americans for a fence along the U.S.- Mexico border. He believes a fence would be moving the country in the wrong direction and instead, we should become "more free."

If becoming "more free" means allowing dangerous terrorists like Warrayat to freely wander back and forth over our borders, it’s not an idea that will fly with the American people.

And as for the fate of Warrayat, he’s been charged with aggravated assault and arson and is being held without bond. If only he had the forsight to carry an American flag in his trunk along with the Palestinian flag, with the help of the ACLU, he could have turned the arson charge into a charge of burning an American flag in protest. 

Back when I was in journalism school (it’s hard to believe, isn’t it?), there were only a few well-defined types of news writing. Among them were "hard news" and "human interest" stories. Hard news was a straight news story devoid of opinion or bias - just the facts laid out in a logical format. Then there was the human interest story, also known as feature writing, which injected the author’s particular world-view into the story.

Even back then, it was plain that feature stories were gradually crowding out hard news stories on the front page of most newpapers. Nowadays, you can pick up any major newspaper on any day and you will be hard-pressed to find a genuine hard news story. Newspapers now exist to persuade, not to report the news.

Enter the case of young Farris Hassan who was just returned to his Florida home from Baghdad by the U.S. military. I briefly caught this on TV this morning and was intrigued when the camera panned Hassan’s bedroom. He had two hand-held type flags sticking out of a lampshade. One was the American flag and one was the Confederate flag. The American flag makes sense but why would the son of two Iraqi immigrants have a Confederate flag in his room?

Young Hassan is a highly intelligent 16-year-old high school student who has been studying the latest brand of feature writing - "immersion journalism." The idea behind immersion journalism is to live like the subject of your story lives - to get inside their head. That way, you can write from the subject’s perspective. Of course, it’s a bunch of hogwash. It’s something akin to the Hollywood folks eating beans at a fundraiser for the homeless so they can know what it feels like to be homeless.

In Hassan’s case, he took the subject matter a little too seriously. In order to know what’s really going on in Iraq, he decided he would have to go there himself. He skipped a week of school and left without permission from his parents, leaving them only a note. Through a little resourcefulness, a little luck and a lot of determination, Hassan eventually made it to Baghdad and discovered that it is really a dangerous place if you’re an American. There are still plenty of bad guys who would like nothing better than to get hold of another American.

Fortunately for Hassan, after a couple of days in Baghdad, he contacted the Associated Press, presumably with the notion of volunteering his services. The AP contacted the U.S. Embassy who sent soldiers to pick him up and Hassan was on his way back home. So at this point, you might think, "oh what a stupid kid!" Well, stupid he is not. Maybe a little idealistic and naive, but he understands what this war is about and what’s at stake much better than most Americans.

Here’s what he said in an emailed essay sent to his school while in Kuwait: “There is a struggle in Iraq between good and
evil, between those striving for freedom and liberty and those striving
for death and destruction. Those
terrorists are not human but pure evil. For their goals to be thwarted,
decent individuals must answer justice’s call for help. Unfortunately,
altruism is always in short supply. Not enough are willing to set aside
the material ambitions of this transient world, put morality first, and
risk their lives for the cause of humanity. So I will.”

Then upon returning, in an interview, Hassan indicated his appreciation of what it means to be an American, “When you go back home you have such a new appreciation for all the
blessing you have there, and I’m just going to be, like, ecstatic for
life.”

I doubt my curiosity about Hassan’s Confederate flag will ever be satisfied, but I have learned something else - that Farris Hassan has a good heart and a lot of guts and that’s not a bad way to start on the adventurous road of life.

Even the ACLU wouldn’t touch this one. The following story proves that laws that protect the American flag from desecration are still enforceable despite what the ACLU thinks.

David Allen Young of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania was sentenced yesterday to probation for the misdemeanor desecration an American flag. The flag incident occured one night last June when Young got very drunk and began arguing with other family members. At one point, he was outside by the front porch when he ran into the American flag hanging there.

Blinded by the desire for revenge and a whole lot of booze, he wrenched the flag off it’s pole and tossed it to the ground. A neighbor who may have had it out for Young called the police and reported his neighbor’s drunken abuse of the American flag. The police arrested Young for violating a 1972 Pennsylvania law that protects the American flag and the Pennsylavania state flag.

Now comes the interesting part. I mentioned above that the ACLU wouldn’t touch this one, but they wanted to touch it. In fact, both the ACLU and the First Amendment Center looked into the possibility of defending Young. And both the ACLU and the First Amendment Center are constantly vigilant for cases where they can use the First Amendment to further a radical leftist agenda.

But the problem in this case was that Young was just plain uncooperative. He made it clear right from the start (before the lawyers could get to him) that he wasn’t making any type of political statement and that he was drunk and didn’t really remember anything he did that night anyway. Young had this to say when questioned about his motives, "It was a rage thing. I really do love my country."

So in his honesty, Young left the liberal lawyers with nothing to grab onto. Both David Hudson of the First Amendment Center and Larry Frankel of the ACLU, obviously frustrated by the defendent’s contrition, made statements indicating that they were surprised that this obscure law was actually enforced. Better luck next time fellas.

On Christmas day, I wrote about the slow demise of America’s largest newspapers. I cited an article by Kevin Diaz, the Washington correspondent for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, as an example of how reporters have been allowed, and sometimes encouraged, to be lazy in their research as long as they promote the paper’s idealogical views.

In his article, Diaz includes a few sentences about the issue of burning the American flag as a political statement. He indicates that the Constitution permits burning American flags in protest, when in fact, it clearly says nothing about the subject. And he claims that an amendment to allow states to ban the desecration of the American flag would give Congress the power to ban flag burning when in fact, it would grant the states that power.

The point was a subtle one but important nonetheless. The major newspapers no longer require reporters to be accurate with the facts. The Editor-in-Chief at the Minneapolis Star Tribune is evidently himself not knowledgeable  enough about these distinctions to call Mr. Diaz and ask him to correct the story before going to print. Either that, or he (or she) just doesn’t care.

Now the Los Angeles Times has been caught with the proverbial pants down again. In a story that ran yesterday about the re-introduction of wolves into Yellowstone Park ten years ago, the writer quoted a story that had originally been released as an April Fool’s Day joke,  "In Wyoming, for example, Gov. Dave Freudenthal last April decreed that the Endangered Species Act is no longer in force and that the state ‘now considers the wolf as a federal dog,’ unworthy of protection."

The only problem is that the reporter didn’t know it was a joke and reported it as fact. The editorial staff at the Times evidently thinks it’s no big deal to print stuff like this and takes it all in stride. David Lauter, who is one of those editors at the Times said, "The reporter saw it on the Internet and had talked with the governor in the past, so she was familiar enough with the way he talks and writes that she thought it sounded authentic, and she didn’t check, which she should have. We hate when this kind of thing happens, and we correct it as quickly as we can."

No wonder they’re losing readers. Contrary to what they might think, their customers aren’t stupid and are only going to put up with so much wrong information before they look elsewhere for news. So why then doesn’t the editorial staff come to grips with the problem and do something about it before it’s too late? The answer is simple. They aren’t able to recognize the problem because they are a big part of the problem.

Writing in an online publication, The Sierra Times, Brian Gorman accuses internet entrepreneurs of hubris for proclaiming that the internet "would change everything," then goes on to say that "…the Internet has, in fact, changed just about everything…" Gorman then laments that the "disruptive effects" of the internet are to blame for the nosedive in circulation of Tribune Co., parent of the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune, among others.

But Gorman ignores the fact that radical idealogy has taken over the newsroom, alienating a growing number of readers. Instead, he says that "it’s no surprise that the one-size-fits-all newspaper is having a tough time competing" against more fragmented internet news sources. The blinders they wear only allow newspaper people to see one aspect of the problem and that blind spot will be the cause of their downfall.

Mistakes like the Los Angeles Times made, printing an April Fool’s joke as fact are glaring and hard to hide from. But inaccuracies that are a result of a lack of understanding, like Kevin Diaz’s misrepresentation of the American flag desecration issue, are much more common and a manifestation of the cancer that is killing the newspaper business.

Once again, the American flag is being held up as a symbol of the current administration rather than a symbol of our republic. The ACLU is suing the State of Florida on behalf of 17 year-old high school student Cameron Frazier, for what they claim amounts to a violation of his free speech rights. Frazier refused to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance, a violation of Florida law, and was punished for his transgression by being asked to leave the room.

Frazier, a student at Boynton Beach Community High School, sees his refusal to salute the American flag not as a question of patriotism, but as a statement of his distaste for the Bush administration, "I believe that the real meaning of the flag - freedom, liberty and equality - has been tarnished by the recent policies of our government. Patriotism is more than going along with everybody else and just saluting a flag. It’s about things like supporting our troops during the holidays and helping hurricane victims."

And, of course, Frazier is correct to say that patriotism is more than saluting the American flag. But he fails to realize that patriotism is also more than supporting our troops or helping hurricane victims. To ignore the foundational principals that have made our country great by deliberately showing disrespect to the symbol of those principals, the American flag, is not patriotism at all.

But all the wrangling over who the true patriot is just serves to cloud the real issue. The ACLU has time and again shown that one of the key elements of it’s agenda is the destruction of the two-parent family structure and this suit is aimed squarely at that target.

As anyone who has attended high school in America knows, in order for anyone to actually learn anything, a certain level of discipline must be maintained. As the level of discipline drops, the teacher must spend more time attempting to control the problem kids and less time teaching the kids who came to learn. The entire day in the average American high school revolves around a set of rules designed to maintain order - periods, bells, hall passes, attendance, etc., etc., etc.

The Florida law doesn’t require a student to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, but it does require every student to stand. If a student feels that the Pledge rubs his or her political conscience the wrong way, a note from Mom or Dad provides the exemption. Asking the student to stand is no more a violation of free speech rights than asking the student to sit while taking a test is.

The real thing the ACLU is after is the requirement that a student get permission from a parent. Across the United States, minors, usually defined as children under the age of 18, do not enjoy the full rights and benefits of adulthood. They are not allowed to vote for example, and at least one parent or court appointed guardian is legally responsible for their actions.

The ACLU is trying to eliminate parental authority one law at a time. If they get to stick it to the American flag in the process, well, that’s just icing on the cake.

Here’s a photo of an American flag suspended from the rigs of two fire trucks in front of St. Stanislaus Kostka Roman Catholic Church in St. Louis Saturday night. It’s not often that you see an American flag used in that manner and it made me wonder why.

After all, Christmas eve is a joyful but solemn time for Christians, celebrating the humble birth of Jesus. It’s not exactly the Fourth of July. But as it turns out, the huge American flag (looks like a 30′ x 60′) was more a symbol of defiance than anything else.

You see, the church’s newly installed Priest. the Rev. Marek Bozek and the church’s six-member board were all ex-communicated by Archbishop Raymond Burke who also warned parishioners to stay away because it would be a mortal sin to attend Mass given by Bozek. But Burke’s rash actions and his warning had the opposite effect. Just days before Christmas Eve, local papers were predicted that a crowd of a hundred might show for the service. Instead, 1500 people showed up, some coming from as far away as Washington, D.C. and Oregon.

Why the inflated interest? Rev. Bozek was not excommunicated for anything the average person would consider deserving of such severe punishment. On the contrary, he simply wanted the congregation of St. Stanislaus to have the Priest they had been without for almost a year-and-a-half. So he took it upon himself, against the wishes of his superiors, to fill that role.

St. Stanislaus is an old church, dating back to the 19th century when an agreement was reached to allow the board control of the property and finances. Archbishop Burke, in an effort to regain control of the money, removed St. Stanislaus’ Priests a year-and-a-half ago, but people continued to show up, eventually convincing Bozek to be their Priest.

So now the symbolism of the giant American flag becomes clear. The congregation of St. Stanislaus considers the ex-communication to be an attack on their religious liberties. Many in the congregation are asking the question that’s sure to be asked if this gets to the national level: Why has a Priest been ex-communicated for serving as he was called to do when so many other Priests have committed hideous crimes such as pedophilia and have remained in the church?

At a time when the Catholic Church has had to weather so much bad press, it seems foolish to be looking for more.

The newspaper industry is panicked to stop the bleeding as circulation continues to plummet. Even the largest newspapers that reach a national audience and once enjoyed unblemished reputations are at a loss as how to reverse the trend.

Yet, papers like the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times continue to ignore the mistakes that brought them to the precipice.

In the name of promoting a particular agenda, they have allowed reporters to become lazy and play fast and loose with the truth, just as long as the "news" tows the party line. A case in point is a piece appearing in the Minneapolis Star Tribune airing a list of complaints about what Congress didn’t do.

Writer Kevin Diaz lists as number 10, the proposed amendment that would allow states to ban desecration of the American flag. Here’s what he writes:

10 Flag burning: It’s still constitutionally permissible to burn an American flag in protest, even though the House approved a constitutional amendment that would give Congress the power to ban flag desecration. The Senate has yet to take up the issue.

Contrary to what Diaz thinks, it’s not correct to say that it’s constitutionally permissible to burn American flags in protest. The Constitution says no such thing. The Constitution says we are guaranteed the right of free speech. The Supreme Court has twice in recent history struck down laws prohibiting the desecration of the American flag, interpreting the Free Speech Clause to encompass behavioral expressions such as flag burning.

But the distinction is important. The Constitution has not changed. Prior to 1989, those laws were constitutional. It is only the interpretation of an activist Court that has opened the door for burning the American flag as protest. A flag amendment would not change the Constitution. It would only allow laws preventing the desecration of the American flag to once again be enforced.

In addition, it is not correct that the proposed flag amendment would give Congress the power to ban desecration of the American flag. Congess would merely allow the individual states to ban flag desecration if they so desire.

These may seem minor points - even to the point of nit-picking. And if the piece was a letter to the editor, they would be easily forgiven. But this comes from the paper’s Washington correspondent who’s job it is to get the facts straight.

Reporters once were concerned first and foremost with being as factually accurate as possible. But that is no longer the case in America’s newsrooms. That’s why we hear of reporters like the New York Times Jason Blair or CBS News anchor Dan Rather and his sidekick Mary Mapes (neither of whom are even willing to admit now that the documents they presented as evidence were forged) who were not outed by their employers, but by other interested parties. I think it’s a safe bet that we’re just seeing the tip of the iceberg.

The American public is slowly but steadily drifting away from newspapers for a variety of reasons but right at the top of the list is the growing realization that it’s no longer news that’s being presented but idealogical propaganda.

The state of Ohio has just poked a stick in the eye of the activist atheist community. Ohio Governor Bob Taft just signed into law a bill authorizing the production of a new license plate that features the American flag as the background and the words "One Nation Under God."

The ACLU, which is the nation’s leading atheism support group, will no doubt be mounting a challenge to this latest affront to atheistic sensibilities.

It’s important to note here that this is only one of about 60 specialty license plates that Ohio offers for an additional fee. The point is that the only people who will be driving around with this plate affixed to their cars are the people who want to.  It’s more or less like having a bumper sticker. Since it’s not mandatory that Ohio motorists buy this particular plate, it will be hard to make the case that the American flag with the religious message of "One Nation Under God" is an official endorsement of religion by the state of Ohio.

Earlier in the year, the ACLU tried to block another specialty plate issued by Ohio with the  words, "Choose Life."  The Supreme Court in January, had already declined to hear cases dealing with license plates with a pro-life message. Eleven states currently offer plates with a pro-life message.

Again using the First Amendment as a tool to silence Americans with opposing view points, the ACLU in collusion with an activist Federal judge, framed the argument as a violation of First Amendment rights  in the South Carolina case that the Supreme Court refused to hear.

The ACLU  coined the phrase "viewpoint descrimination" to explain how a license plate might possibly violate someone’s free speech rights. The idea is that since a license plate is available with the message "Choose Life" but not available with the message, "Choose Abortion," the free speech rights of the pro-abortion people have been trod upon.

The similar argument will no doubt be made in the case of the American flag with "One Nation Under God." The state of Ohio is discriminating against those with an opposing viewpoint. Perhaps the ACLU will question why the state of Ohio doesn’t offer a plate with the Anarchist flag as the background and the message, "Abolish Borders - And Stop Talking About God."

The atheists who are waging this battle aren’t interested in the religious aspect of this. They view religion as politics just as they view every other issue as political. That’s why there is so much hatred directed towards the American flag. It’s viewed as a symbol of an America that they hate - an America in which the vast majority profess to be Christian and believe the United States should remain a sovereign country.

I often refer in this blog to the First Amendment and in particular, the misuse of the free speech clause. The Supreme Court , in two narrow 5-4 decisions, has ruled that burning the American flag constitutes free speech and is protected by the First Amendment. In so doing, the Court was required to stretch the meaning of the word "speech" to include various forms of "expression," which is synonomous with "behavior."

I am, of course, interested in the protection of American flags, but that’s only part of the picture. The larger goal is to point out, whenever possible, ways that the American judiciary uses the law and the Constitution in particular to promote personal social and political agendas.

We have two recent examples of how judges at the Federal level have misused the First Amendment to further their own biases against Christians. In both cases they have used the Establishment Clause which simply states that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…"  The original intent was to prevent Congress from creating an official state religion, not to stifle religious expression or to endorse one religious view over another.

The first case involves a ban imposed on the Indiana House of representatives by U.S. District Court Judge David Hamilton. Judge Hamilton ruled in late November that the traditional prayer invocation must be non-sectarian. It has been a 188-year tradition to open legislative sessions with prayer and here’s the kicker: Even though various religious leaders have regularly been invited to lead the prayer including Muslim Imams who have invoked the name of Allah, Judge Hamilton very specifically ruled only that the name of Jesus Christ may not be invoked.

If his intention was to be even-handed, why did he specifically refer only to Jesus Christ? Why didn’t he offer a list of religious dieties so as not to target one particular group?

The second case was all over the news just a few days ago. U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III ruled that schools within the jurisdiction of the Dover Area School Board, Pennsylvania, may not teach Intelligent Design in addition to Evolution. Even some religious leaders are saying that given the circumstances of the case, there is little else the judge could have done. There was good evidence that several of the School Board Members had religious reasons for promoting the Intelligent Design curriculum.

But then Judge Jones revealed his true bias skewering proponents of Intelligent Design in a 139-page decision. Jones said "The overwhelming evidence is that Intelligent Design is a religious view, a mere re-labeling of creationism and not a scientific theory. It is an extension of the Fundamentalists’ view that one must either accept the literal interpretation of Genesis or else believe in the godless system of evolution."

I think it would be helpful if Judge Jones himself would voluntarily submit to cross examination concerning his scientific credentials. I say that because everything he said in the above statement is wrong.

Intelligent design is a movement within the scientific community, not the religious community, that has grown out of the relatively young field of molecular biology and it’s leading proponents are scientists who teach at major universities.

Simply put, in recent decades, molecular biologists have discovered that all the machinery of life takes place at the molecular level and that it is unimaginably complex. But that’s not all. Within those very complex systems, they have found many examples of irreduceable complexity. And irreduceable complexity does not square with Darwin’s theory. There is a serious scientific discussion to be had here but this judge wants nothing of it.

Most of the scientists who specialize in evolution have known for years that Darwins theory has major problems and is in trouble from a purely scientific standpoint. The problem however, is not science but a  philosophical viewpoint.

The scientific community in general holds to a naturalistic philosophy, meaning that nature is all there is and there aint no more. There is no room for the notion that there really might be a God and especially a creator-God. It can’t be stressed enough that the naturalistic world-view is not based on science but is in itself, a religion.

That’s why, despite the almost total lack of evidence to support Darwin’s theory, many scientists (but not all scientists) along with their loyal followers like Judge Jones are absolutely convinced that evolution is true. It must be true because the alternative is a creator-God and afterall, that’s not scientific.

If you would like to read about the science behind Intelligent Design, pick up a copy of Darwin’s Black Box by Michael Behe, who is a molecular biologist at Lehigh Universtity. He manages to explain some very complicated stuff in a way that makes it understandable and interesting. And if you want to read a scholarly examination of Darwin’s theory, get a copy of Darwin on Trial by Phillip Johnson who, at the time of writing, was a law professor at Berkeley.

It’s been a bad year for folks that burn the American flag in this country. Two misguided young men will get some jail time for two unrelated flag burning incidents. 

Eighteen year-old Scott Baber of Sarasota Florida is unhappily facing six months in the lock up, but it could have been worse. Baber was facing an eight year stretch for three counts of arson but luckily for him, the Judge was in a forgiving mood. Circuit Court Judge Charles Roberts felt that Baber’s drunken rampage in which he and another man used kerosene to burn the American flags on several houses as well as the community’s clubhouse was "unquestionably an anomaly."

The Judge referred to Baber as an "outstanding citizen," except, of course, when he’s drinking and committing arson. In the American flag burning spree that Baber and his co-defendent claimed was justified because they are Anarchists and were protesting, one house suffered damage from fire.  At the time of arrest, the two men also had bottles filled with kerosene with rags stuffed in the tops. Those used to be known as Molotov Cocktails and would pretty much destroy anything they were thrown at.

All in all, there were eight charges: three as a principal to arson, one for possession of a firebomb and four counts of criminal mischief. Baber plead guilty to all charges.

And in California, Lee Henry Vollick will spend only ten days in jail in addition to three years probation. Nineteen-year-old Vollick took an American flag and dragged it behind his scooter as a protest last July 2nd. Not generating the reaction he had hoped, he returned with the now soiled American flag to California Oaks Sports Park where the city of Murrieta was holding it’s 14th birthday celebration.

Vollick made his way into the crowd that was gathered for a concert, and with a lighter, lit the flag on fire. Many of the attendees were rather unhappy to see the American flag being burned and confronted Vollick, who was eventually arrested. He was charged with resisting a police officer.

If he had gone to trial, Vollick may have possibly faced a year in jail. As it is, he’s happy not to be facing a long jail sentence because it would curtail his efforts to "be online and get my message out to people."

What a glutton for punishment. The last time he got his "message out to the people" by burning an American flag with "the people" all around him, he got the crap beat out of him.