I couldn’t add an image to my comment to today’s Bill Whittle Now, so….I guess I’m in the 42 percentile. My wife is too. I fly a flag every morning before I head to work, and respectfully take it down at sunset after I’ve gotten home from work. And across the street, our newly minted Americans originally from England fly the stars and stripes, and so does the neighbor next to them. We live on a relatively busy residential street, a thoroughfare to the beach, and there is a good deal of local and tourist traffic passing by. Aside from all the right reasons to fly our nations flag, it’s also a poke in eye of passers by who may be in the 9% of “not proud”, or “somewhat proud”. It’s my dad’s flag he handed down to me. After his passing and my inheritance of the home I grew up in, I’m compelled to honor my dad and the country he served while in 1st Army in WWII.
7 replies on “My Response to American Pride Tanking”
My Dad just installed a flag pole at our new house yesterday. He’s planning on installing lights to illuminate it at night so that we may leave it up.
We’ve got a flag on a short pole similar to yours that goes into a mounting on the front of the house instead of a free standing pole. As such we don’t remove the flag from the pole but it is long enough the flag doesn’t hit the ground when the pole is brought in and stood in its place. Maybe the flag shouldn’t hit the wall as it does.
I don’t suppose putting your pole bracket on the road side of the pole is possible but that’s what strikes me as odd.
As to the triangle fold, I’m not sure if that is possible with just one person. It might be more correct but I think treating the flag with care and not just wrapping it into a ball would be ok, given qualifying situations.
Yes. I used to fly it on the house, and just didn’t like it flapping up against the exterior wall. I can’t face it to the street because it’s so close to the place in the road where folks walk I wouldn’t want to encroach. It does look a bit odd facing the house. Having said that, however, we have a big bay window looking out over the carden and towards the flag. When I’m home and watching it wave in the breeze, it’s in full view. And I do look at it often.
Thanks Karl.
And by the way, If I’m flying it incorrectly or in a disrespectful manner which can be improved, please let me know ASAP.
I have a question. Do you fold it up in the proper triangular shape every time? Because I learned to do that as a child, either in Girl Scouts (RIP) or just at school (where we did that every day), and I thought that this was normal, ordinary knowledge and behavior, but recently it has come to my attention that apparently most people think that’s some sort of mysterious occult knowledge.
I learned that and more in “BOY” scouts 50 years ago. That’s where I recall my knowledge of flag etiquette. As a member of Lions Clubs international from 2010 to 2017, I would take a team into 2nd grades and give out American Flags to the students and talk much about our flag and it’s history. The folding of the flag was a very formal thing we learned, however it really hit home for me and my sister at my father’s memorial, when the Watsonville VFW came and gave a gun salute and folded a burial flag and handed to my older sister. No, I do not fold it each night, but roll it carefully not to let it ever touch the ground, and I store it just inside of our front door.
Not funny and rather sad that some think reverence for our flag is mysterious cult knowledge.
Not cult, occult, i.e., hidden.
I was particularly struck by it recently when my uncle, who is a Vietnam Veteran, was arranging to give a flag to the mother of a soldier from his unit who either had never received one or had missed some other recognition he should have had. Anyway, he obtained the flag at a shop where the proprietor was another Vietnam Vet and he had a funeral flag from yet another Vietnam Vet, which he gave him to give to the mother of the soldier who died in Vietnam. Long story short, the flag needed cleaning but my uncle and the shop owner didn’t know how to re-fold it properly. (When I asked him why, he said, “I never had that duty, so I never learned.”) But it turned out that my uncle’s wife had been a Girl Scout, so she knew how to fold it. I have to say that this whole story left me scratching my head a bit.
I am glad to hear that you passed on the knowledge of How to Fold an American Flag Properly to a lot of children who might otherwise have not been exposed to it. Sad that it’s no longer standard curriculum.