I had to travel down to North Carolina to drop my wife’s grandfather off at my sister-in-law’s house after he had spent a week or so visiting with us. While I’m there, I take the opportunity to visit the Festival of Flight airshow at Pope AFB. I’m an aviation buff and a pilot, so this kind of thing goes really well with my personality. And the key performers this year, for the Memorial Day weekend airshow, are the US Air Force Thunderbirds. While we’re watching the performance, with several thousand other people, I can’t help but notice, as do several other visitors, this gentleman in the bleachers nearby.
He’s probably in his late forties, early fifties, has had quite a few of the beverages from the beer stands, and is totally enjoying this demonstration flight by the Thunderbirds. He is hollering his approval at each maneuver. As the several-tonned weapon-chariots-turned-toys turn carbon-based fuel into speed and loud noise, this gentleman is cheering them on, chasing their afterburner-induced roars with fists raised in exultation and pumping them in victory. And as the music changes, from rhythmic and exciting to pensive and patriotic, I watch this man stumble through the words.
These were symbols to him, symbols of his freedom as an American. I know this freedom is not defined by the symbols, by the planes, the Armed Forces, the flag, the Anthem, or the songs, but that doesn’t change the meaning of these symbols for that man. I would never seek to strip the man of his symbols, but I would also never accept that man’s demand that I pledge allegiance to the flag, that I sing the Anthem, that I revere my fellow members of the Armed Forces in order to prove my love for my country or its freedoms, to him. Nor would I allow that man to demand it of any other.
The demand is the very antithesis of freedom.
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