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U.S. Veteran Faces Legal Action for Flying American Flag
Personally, I think it should be against the law to deny an American, in America, the right to appropriately fly the American flag on his or her property unless so doing causes some kind of legitimate safety hazard - for instance, if the flag blocks the vision of drivers creating a potentially dangerous traffic situation. I would like to do something about the situation in Macedonia, Ohio, but I live in Illinois and I'm not sure what kind of a local impact I can have from here. However, if I make a commitment to act here in Illinois should a similar situation arise, maybe others can do the same thing in other parts of the country.
Members of the board of the particular property association should have their names exposed; they should be held up to public ridicule forcing them to succumb to public pressure or, at the least, to pay a price in prestige for continued nonsense like this.
Here we have a veteran - an Army chaplain - who is told he can't fly his flag outside of his house. I don't live in one of these property associations where they try to dictate what color you can paint your house, whether you can put shutters on your windows or whether you can unfold a lawn chair in your garage to drink some ice tea or other beverage (I recall another story where a woman was told that she was treating her garage like another room in her house and they were going to raise her taxes or otherwise tell her to cease and desist - I don't recall exactly).
As far as I'm concerned, property associations go much too far. Someone has since painted it, but I can recall a house about three blocks south of me that was painted dark lavender. It was horrendous. I don't think it did property values any good in the neighborhood but it was a constant reminder of the individual right to live as one pleases as long as you're not hurting someone else. Of course, the lavender home's neighbors would probably argue that the owner of that home was hurting them through their property values and that is the same argument put forth by home owners associations.
Maybe there's a little validity to their complaint. Personally, I'm more inclined to stand up to someone's right to paint the house next door chartreuse before I'm willing to deny them the right to paint their house as they please. But, whether you agree with that notion or not, telling someone they can't fly the US flag in the USA is a patent violation of the constitutional freedoms I cherish. Tell them the flag has to be flown in a proper manner. Tell them they can't put a 10' X 20' flag in their front yard or fly it on a flag pole that is 150' tall, but don't tell them they can't fly the flag.
Frankly, people like this, enjoying the very freedoms and liberties the flag represents, deserve neither when they take a stand against someone's right to fly the flag. If someone does it locally, I'll respond with a bumper sticker. I blog their names far and wide. I'll contribute to a billboard that casts their names in a proper light of shame. But, I will not stand by quietly when a veteran, or any other freedom-loving American, is told they can't fly the flag in a proper manner. That veteran almost assuredly knows some people who died protecting what that flag represents. Those who paid the ultimate price deserve nothing less than my support when this type of situation occurs, and they'll get it.
