Defenders of kneeling expose their ignorance

I am absolutely amazed at the depressingly large number of liberals writing in on the subject of showing respect to our flag. The ignorance shown by these people who really should know better has thrown me into a bit of a depression. Can there really be this many people who are so ignorant of the treatment of the flag that they have to write a letter to the editor in order to display it? I mean, this is stuff I learned about by the fourth grade. Since there are so many people displaying so much ignorance, perhaps a refresher course is in order. Please open your browser, point it toward “Title 4 of the United States Code” on Wikipedia.org, and read along with me.

The U.S. Code, Title 4, Chapter 1, Section 4 states the Pledge of Allegiance “should be rendered by standing at attention facing the flag with the right hand over the heart.” The text continues, “When not in uniform men should remove any non-religious headdress with their right hand and hold it at the left shoulder, the hand being over the heart.”

In the same code, Section 8 states, “No disrespect should be shown to the flag of the United States of America.” It then lists a number of instances of what to do in various examples and finishes with a flat declaration. “The flag represents a living country and is itself considered a living thing.”

Now, granted, the U.S. Code is not law. If you’re standing in a crowd and don’t put your hand over your heart when the flag passes by, you won’t suffer any legal consequences for it. Nobody will roam through the crowd looking for scofflaws. It simply spells out how a decent citizen behaves.

A number of letter writers, most recently Coralie Koonce, tried to rationalize this behavior by comparing kneeling during the anthem to kneeling before other people. You show the flag the same respect that you show the other people in your life. If you kneel on a regular basis to people, then I’m OK with you kneeling for our flag. Call me skeptical, but I’m pretty sure that Coralie does not go around kneeling to her friends and relatives, and furthering my skepticism, I don’t think anybody else does, either.

In my opinion, these people are simply trying to rationalize bad behavior because they don’t respect our country. We can get into the reasons why in another letter. The important thing to take from this is that the people writing in excusing this behavior should know beyond any shadow of a doubt that it is wrong and inherently disrespectful of our flag. If they don’t, one must ask why they aren’t curious enough to find out the answer before embarrassing themselves writing letters exposing their ignorance in the local paper.

LONNIE HILL

Fayetteville