Off Topic — HabitableZone

Off Topic » in reply to The flag is just a piece of cloth................

re: The flag is just a piece of cloth................
ER — (archived)

When the battle cruiser Bismark was getting ready for her first, and final, sortie into the Atlantic, Hitler himself came to visit. There is a famous photograph of the ship's officers giving the Nazi salute to the Fuhrer. All except one, the skipper. Captain Lindemann was at attention, smartly delivering the traditional military salute. Lindemann was a known anti-Nazi, he even had several half-Jewish officers on his staff, but his competence and courage and loyalty to his duty made him essential to the ship's mission. He did not return from it.

The flag may be just a symbol, as is a salute, but this is something the flag fetishists will never understand, or deliberately choose not to. As with the Nazis, the symbol (or the lack or it) is perverted into a means of bullying those who disagree with them, of slandering everyone who is not just like them and crushing all disagreement and opposition and individuality. It's symbolic content is transformed from an expression of pride to an instrument of coercion.

Can you believe or trust the man who constantly brags about how much he loves his wife, or his children, or his country, or his god? Some things are best mentioned briefly, or on special occasions, or not at all. They are part of a man's solemn commitment to himself and the things he treasures, not a means of proclaiming one's virtue and purity to the world. He who screams it from the rooftops is a hypocrite. He who insists others scream it is an abomination.

Matthew 6: 1-8

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