Today, Right Now, the Flag of the USA:

and all it has represented over the years...

It does seem that the Repubs own it now.

Yea i'm proud too.

Protest the rule of George.

Why relinquish the flag, and hence patriotism, to the Right? If your opposition to the Bush administration means you feel ashamed to be American, you are in effect surrendering to the forces of tyranny and oppression. I do not for one second believe that the War in Iraq or other aspects of the Bush administration's foreign policy is emblematic of our flag. We can and should expect more from our government. We deserve a government that lives up to the ideals it professes, that can bear our flag as an emblem of justice and humanity.

we should use the flag for our ideals,not fight over it but prove to the neoscums& lowlife thumpers that we are what America is about.The more we get bombarded by the hatefull greed media the more we should proudly wave it,not hiding behind it like the freepers but taking it back.They are the subversive minority that wants to sell the country into the toilet,they have no allegiance to anything but money. Thier bullshit " Love it or leave it " should be " Fix it or forget it " We are the patriots,they are the chicken shit,ignorant power hungry fools that are against life liberty and freedom.

> Why relinquish the flag, and hence patriotism, to the Right? If your opposition to the Bush administration means you feel ashamed to be American, you are in effect surrendering to the forces of tyranny and oppression.

Good observation.

is a symbol.

Like all symbols, it can be misused.

No matter what is going on currently, the flag ..... as does the country itself ...... belongs to us all.

Also: you can disrespect it all you want ...... that's because of our 1st Amendment. Okay, maybe not after Scalia becomes Chief Justice, but, for now, anyhoo.

...and I was in the scouts. I love the flag that flew on Mt. Suribachi and that drapes the caskets of our military men. When Karl Lewis got his fifth gold medal and ran around the track he let the flag touch the ground and it bothered me, not that he didn't earn the medals...

Now the flag is burned in effigy in muslim countries because it has come, to them, to represent what a swastika means to a jew or what a confederate battle flag means to an African American.

I won't forget that it was the Republican president and his neocon cronies who dragged our flag into the muck and mire of international scorn and disrepute. Damn them for that!

I gave up saluting it, or respecting it, about the same time I got out of the marines and started protesting the horrors in Vietnam that were being carried out behind the flag.

"Patriotism is the most foolish of passions, and the passion of fools." Schopenhauer

What do you allow the Right to define for you what the flag means? Since when does murder represent the only true meaning of patriotism? You may buy their accept their appropriation of American symbols and therefore submit to tyranny and oppression, but I do refuse to do so.