Desecrating Old Glory

I received a message via email from a nephew last night. He was justifiably incensed over an article he had read on the Fox News Website. The article was about a Texas woman who had displayed a 3 by 5 foot American flag in her office that she shares with three other employees at the Kindred Hospital in Mansfield, Texas. I have provided a link to the article, but it will probably not be posted for any length of time, so I will try to recap it without plagiarizing.

The woman, Debbie McLucas, has a husband and two sons who served in the United States Military, and a daughter who is currently deployed in Iraq as a combat medic. I think she has good reason to want to display a flag in her office to commemorate Memorial Day.

However, upon arriving at the hospital, she was met by her supervisor, who advised her that due to multiple complaints the flag had been taken down. She later found that not only had it been taken down, it had then been desecrated by being wrapped around the flagpole and laid on the floor of the office.

There is a flag that flies outside in front of the hospital. The supervisor who ordered the removal of her office flag asked Mrs. McLucas If that one would suffice. She answered, “No, it would not.”

It turns out that the ‘multiple complaints’ were actually lodged by only one person, a fellow employee, and a woman who immigrated from Africa 14 years ago and found the American flag offensive.

Through vigorous protest on the part of Mrs. McLucas, the hospital finally agreed to allow her to display her flag again—probably to avoid some bad publicity. However, if the facts are all true, the hospital spokesperson explained that “...it wasn’t the flag itself, but rather the size that had caused the original complaint.” Well, obviously someone is stretching the truth there.

It would seem that all’s well that ends well, but I have to ask why this was allowed to happen in the first place. Have we really become so politically correct, so multicultural and so disrespectful of our roots that we can so easily throw honor, tradition, symbolism and commitment to the wind?

Is it solely my opinion that anyone who comes to this country and accepts all of the freedoms and benefits that it provides should be not only willing, but anxious to learn our language, adopt our customs, respect those who also share the same rights and freedoms?

I also must ask, and I don’t want to seem racist here— there are many Caucasians who have immigrated from Africa to America, so she might well be one of those—why the only people who insist on using the dual appellation to identify themselves are ‘African-Americans?’ Most of them have never even seen Africa much less had direct ties to that continent less than 150 years old. I’m sorry, but the principal antagonist in the above story is an African-American in the truest sense of the term. She has apparently always placed the ‘African’ part ahead of and superior to the ‘American’ part. The article didn’t refer to her race and I won’t either, so my question is not one of race, but rather one of nationality.

I have just one more question that comes to mind after reading the above-cited article. How many of the millions of illegal immigrants on whom our government wants to bestow amnesty and full citizenship are going to also put their native country ahead of their adoptive one?

If a person is not willing to accept and adopt a full citizenship status, then they don’t deserve to be given that status in the first place.