THE PATRIOT POST - MARK ALEXANDER - MAR 1, 2023
Some of the mindless decrees emanating from Biden’s luminary Pentagon appointees are just surreal.
“Citizens by birth or choice of a common country, that country has a right to concentrate your affections. The name of American, which belongs to you, in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of Patriotism, more than any appellation derived from local discriminations.” —George Washington (1796)
Some of our more cognitively gifted senior military leaders, when contemplating the most pressing national security threats and our military readiness to confront them, have openly speculated about war with the ChiComs in the future — perhaps the very near future. Never mind the little dustup in Ukraine in the proxy war between Vladimir Putin and the free world, or the deadly precedent set by our “commander-in-chief” when he ordered our surrender and retreat from Afghanistan.
Those threats notwithstanding, apparently Joe Biden’s secretary of defense, Lloyd Austin, got the priorities memorandum and is making sure our military forces are fully complying with the administration’s woke agenda, lowering recruiting standards and making sure Marines celebrate “Pride Month” to impress upon them Biden’s “diversity, equity, and inclusion” mandates.
The result is that our nation’s military recruiting goals are not being met on the front end — a shortfall not seen since 1973 at the end of the Vietnam War — and too many of our best and brightest young enlisted personnel and officers are exiting. Biden’s civilian Pentagon cadres have issued a variety of “explanations” for the missed goals and the exodus of our warriors, but the fact is these critical readiness deficits are the direct result of the anti-American sentiments embraced by Biden and his administrative wokesters.
The latest evidence of how abjectly tone-deaf this administration is would be the official memorandum from Chris Meagher, assistant to the secretary of defense for public affairs, barring uniformed personnel from participating in the familiar patriotic flag displays at major sporting events and other high-profile public venues. This would include on-the-field “unfurling, holding, and/or carrying of giant horizontal U.S. flags” during the playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” It further decrees that “DoD jump teams may not incorporate [it] in their public demonstrations if the flag cannot be caught reliably and handled respectfully by ground personnel during landings.”
For the record, the display of huge flags on sporting fields, and those carried by Navy SEAL Leap Frogs and Army Golden Knights parachute teams, always include ground crews to respectfully intercept our flag in order that it not touch the ground — though that presents a challenge sometimes.
A Pentagon spokesperson, Cmdr. Nicole Schwegman, confirmed that even though “many, including service members, find these events moving and patriotic,” they are now forbidden.
In fact, Title 4 of the United States Code, also known as the Flag Code, does specify that “the flag should never be carried flat or horizontally, but always aloft and free.” That section also states that “the flag should never touch anything beneath it, such as the ground.”
However, does it strike you as odd that leftist Democrat Party appointees, many of whom view our flag as a symbol of division and oppression, are suddenly concerned that it be treated with the utmost respect?
Call me skeptical.
We fly American flags with both a sense of Patriotic spirit and humility.
At our Patriot Post publishing office, there’s a 40-foot flagpole honoring generations of Americans past and present who have endeavored to “to support and defend” our legacy of American Liberty, often at great cost.
A few years ago, I wrote about the 25-foot flagpole at our house, which was a target of complaints from a wealthy, white-privileged suburban leftist of the ilk now tearing down all that has made our country a beacon of Liberty for the world.