Lets start this campaign off with a question...
Obviously in the last year, there has been a lot of 'flag waving'... my question to you is, what does 'The Flag' mean to you?
I really ask this to YOU , ‘my’ generation, or even younger… what does ‘the flag’ mean to you?…
See there are a lot of people in this country that take great pride in the fact that they are American… they unlike us, had to ‘work’ at becoming American… they left, fled, abandoned their lives and family to come here, to America to ‘better’ their lives….
Let me tell you a small, self-centered story… I have this apprentice at work, he is 45 years old and from ‘Former’ Russia… he has lived here for five years, and just yesterday he ‘swore in’ as an American…
So today when I went in to work, knowing that he ‘swore in’ yesterday, I took him a beautiful 2’X4’ embroidered American flag, I shook his hand, congratulated him and Welcomed him to our country…
What so many of us forget is that this country is based on immigrants or to quote some people more intelligent than myself, ‘we are a country based on former gypsies, tramps, and thieves’… some of you have heard me complain about job losses and such to ‘border hoppers’… that can be taken out of context… if someone wants to come to this country and ‘better’ themselves and become one of ‘us’… that is different than coming here and taking our work away from us and sending all the economic gain back to their home country…
Now back to my story, this is a grown educated adult, he has lived here in America in his grown adult life, and still chose to become American…when I handed him that flag which was folded properly in a star studded triangle, it was ‘uneventful’, it was 6:00am, we were wearing hard hats and safety glasses, standing under a bunch of scaffolding on a construction site, only one other witness besides the two of us, but it still brought a tear to his eye… hell it brought a tear to my eye to where I had to walk away…
I ask you… WHY?… what is it when I see a flag waving, or hear the national anthem play, that makes me tear up… why when I hear about a single loss of life by someone in the military in the line of duty do I tear up?…
It’s hard to understand, I don’t think I am even asking or explaining my thought right, but it has to do with Pride, honor, and an understanding that we have ‘something’ worth fighting for… I do believe that I am ‘too young’ to know what it means to defend our country, and to understand what it means to loose friends and family in the name of Liberty and Freedom… BUT I do understand that people have given their lives for our Freedom, our Liberty and for us… That is a clear sign to me that I want to understand what it is they are fighting for…
I think, that when I look at our flag, that is what I think of, I think of ALL of the men and women that have given their lives for US, all of us, those of us that have been here our whole lives and were lucky enough to have been born here, and those of us that are new to this country and want to better themselves and give their families a better place to live… regardless, I say screw, superman, screw the X-men, the true heros are those who have lost their lives in OUR name…
I hope while kids are playing video games based on world war two that they actually understand that there was a real war, that men and women lost there lives in for them to be able to play those games…
So again, I ask, what does ‘The Flag’, the one tattered and flying from your car window, represent to you?…
Johnathan Gupta
October 25, 2002
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