It’s Time to Take Back OUR Flag!
Symbols are an important part of every human culture and they often serve as a way of identifying with a particular group or conveying a particular belief.
After 9/11 flags sold in record numbers as Americans came together in a show of unity and patriotism.
I myself purchased a flag lapel pin, and raised a flag on my front porch in Naperville, Illinois.
Unfortunately, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Bush, Rove and their neocon political allies soon took over the public debate and anybody who dared speak out against their ideas was branded as an unpatriotic supporter of the terrorists under the divisive “with us or against us” Bush ideology. They began feeding false information to the American people to win support for an unjust war, they began stripping us of our civil liberties, they began censoring the media through threats and intimidation, they enlisted the support of corporations such as AT&T to violate the law and our constitutional rights, they oversaw the torture of human beings in Abu Ghraib, they isolated and interrogated people in secret CIA prisons in foreign nations, they opened Guantanamo Bay and suspended habeas corpus, they abandoned the Geneva Convention, they gave billion dollar no-bid contracts to Dick Cheney's friends who then stole from our brave military heroes, and they banned the media from showing the American people our dead brave soldiers coming home in flag-draped coffins in the name of national security, all the while leaving our northern and southern borders completely unsecured. They showed complete disregard for the principles that have made our great nation a beacon of freedom all around the world for more than two centuries, and they abandoned the principals that make us all proud to be Americans.
…and they shamefully did this under the symbol and brand of the American Flag.
Many people who saw what was happening stopped wanting to be identified with George W. Bush and Karl Rove’s destruction of American values and stopped wearing the lapel flag pin that the neocons had co-opted as the symbol of those allied with their anti-American behaviors. I was one of them, and Senator Barrack Obama was another.
When Bush was elected to a second term using a false fear-based agenda the Canadian government reported that U.S. citizens began applying for Canadian citizenship in record numbers. I however decided that it was better to stay and fight for the country that I love so much. It was time to take back our flag and restore our deeply rooted American values of truth, freedom, and justice for all.
I started wearing my flag lapel pin again while publicly challenging the actions of the neocon extremists, and I became more politically active, including running for public office and winning my seat with more than 80% of the vote in a strongly Republican county. Many other Americans also became politically active for the first time in their lives.
The neocons and allies of John McCain are again trying to politicize the American flag lapel pin by co-opting it as their exclusive brand. They are labeling people as patriotic or unpatriotic based on whether or not they consistently wear a flag pin in public. They are challenging Senator Barrack Obama’s patriotism based on their narrow-minded ideological views, and unfortunately some less well-informed American voters are buying into the spin.
Senator Barrack Obama is one of the greatest and truly patriotic Americans of our lifetime. He is an inspiration to our generation, and the embodiment of the American dream. I was pleased to see that Senator Obama wore a flag lapel pin during his endorsement by John Edwards in Michigan last night.
Senator Obama is fighting the good fight to TAKE BACK OUR FLAG and the meaning it has to not only the American people but also the majority of the good citizens of our global community.
All of Senator Obama’s supporters should follow his lead and educate the American voters who might question our patriotism. Consider this a call to action to all true Americans who believe in the principals that have made our nation great to TAKE BACK OUR FLAG from the neocon radical extremists who have done so much damage to our great nation over the last eight years.
Begin wearing a flag pin while going door to door campaigning for Senator Obama,
Wear a flag pin when you wear your Obama shirt,
Wear a flag pin above your Barack Obama pin everywhere you go,
Place an American flag sticker on your Barrack Obama posters,
Proudly display a flag on your car near your Obama bumper sticker,
Place a flag in the window of your home where you display your Barrack Obama poster,
And place a flag in your yard near your Barrack Obama sign.
George Bush has destroyed the Republican brand with his incompetence and misguided, immoral, and un-American behavior while seated as our president, but we can’t let him destroy the American brand represented by our flag!
It’s time to TAKE BACK OUR FLAG and to fly it proudly as Americans who believe in true American values and as supporters of Senator Barrack Obama, one of the greatest Americans to have ever lived, and the greatest hope our nation has to restore our historical place in the world as the vision of peace, freedom, justice, and liberty for all.
As Senator Obama has so inspirationally stated, WE ARE THE CHANGE WE HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR!Bob Hollis,El Dorado Hills, CA
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