I have been asked to comment about the burning of the American Flag. To me the Flag is a piece of colored cloth. Even as a little kid, when we stood up in school to pledge our allegiance to the flag, I didn’t feel any patriotism or respect. Maybe I associated the flag with my worst year in school. Mrs. Allen was my first grade teacher. She used to wear a thimble on her middle finger and would thump us on the back of the head if we looked up or didn’t make our Palmer circles perfectly round. I hated her and that class so maybe that’s why I don’t get a thrill over any Flag.

I was in Chicago once with an out-of-uniform Air Force sergeant. As we skirted a large group of firemen having some type of ceremony, one fireman quilted up into stopping while they raised the flag and played the National Anthem as we were running to meet our impatient wives to go home. Neither of us felt any remorse on wanting to hurry past the ceremony.

Many people seem to share my neutral feeling because they don’t rise at ball games, formal events, and parades. I have seen Flag cloth used for clothes, pillows, and quilts. The Supreme Court says it may be a symbol but burning it is a First Amendment right. When it is burned as a protest in other countries, the Court’s decision diminishes the meaning of the protest. Even when the Flag is burned here, people don’t seem to get upset anymore.

Perhaps the Flag means less to those of us who were born and raised here but more to expats who haven’t lived here in years and immigrants who feel they have reached the promised land of opportunity and safety. Many service people equate it with the home and family they miss. This jaded American remembers all the Cheney’s and McCarthy’s who have wrapped themselves in the flag in order to manipulate us into their ideology.

Many people remember pictures of the Flag flying over Fort Sumter, on caskets of FDR and Kennedy, and above Mt. Suribachi. Those many bring tears but to see pictures of the Flag at the many atrocities Americans have committed also bring tears but not of joy.

If the Flag is to be a symbol of the good we do then it must also be the symbol of the bad we do. George C. Scott standing in front of an outdoor theater screen sized American Flag thrills the heart. Seeing the Flag over Japanese internment camps after we stole their land and businesses during World War II bring shame to caring people. Does the movie of Neil Armstrong planting the Flag on the moon obliterate those of John Wayne leading a charge against the American Indians who only wanted to keep their land and way of life?

Our Flag, like the Flags of Japan, China, USSR, Germany and too many others are symbols of genocide, aggression, and greed. Maybe my feelings are from Mrs. Allen’s class and getting thumped on the back of the head when I looked up at the Flag.