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Yet Another Work Discussion...
Mervap:
Work is such a fine place to interact with folks you don't have much in common with, and, because of that, see different ways of looking at some things. So here goes....
With all of the heated rhetoric in the news lately about "respecting the flag", a co-worker of mine wore a shirt to work emblazoned with the slogan, "If you stomp on my flag, I will stomp your ass.". He was informed that the shirt was not appropriate and asked to either change it or wear it inside out. He did turn it inside out, but grumbled the rest of the day about his freedom of speech rights. Our company, as well as our client company, have pretty clear guidelines about what constitutes inappropriate outerwear....this one falls under "provocative clothing". I am not going to go down the rabbit hole of the First Amendment and the freedom of speech, at least not at this time. What piqued my interest was the line on the shirt. I should explain that I would consider myself as patriotic as the next guy, but I cannot truly understand why a person would threaten another person's well-being for the actions described. I was chatting with another co-worker about it and told him that and he seemed to think that I do not love my country as I should. I told him, in return, that the flag is a symbol, a large piece of cloth emblazoned with a design that we have agreed upon to fly in places of importance. It is not my country....it is not me or my family or loved ones.....it is not a person at all. He said that it represents us and our freedom....I told him that, if he were to stomp a mudhole in someone over disrespecting the flag that he would be not just breaking the law (assault), but he would be violating the freedom (of the other guy) that he claims to treasure. We ended the discussion amicably and said we'd just have to agree to disagree, still.....
Just wondering about y'all's take on it.
2 of 3:
I think I mentioned on here before that one of our Canadian comedy programs did a parody of the differences between Canada and the US of A. They showed two versions of how each country reacted to violating each other's flags. The American version was just as you described Merv...with the patriotic American angry at the disrespect shown to the flag. The Canadian version just had a guy in a plaid shirt watching the Canadian flag burning and saying..." what an idiot...they cost like 30 bucks man".
That's how I personally feel about it though..so I laughed. I don't take that kind of thing personally enough to get upset. It doesn't mean I don't love my country. What does stomping on a flag mean? It's just trolling, isn't it?
Everybody is angry about something these days. :(
Greg:
I guess I have to keep remembering that there is no right and wrong on this.
Im not patriotic at all. I consider myself a citizen of the world and whatever lies beyond space and time. I try to think of others throughout my days. So...the whole flag business is useless to me. Stomp it, wave it...have at it.
I know three vets who saw military action oversees and none of the three care who stomps on the flag. Im sure some vets do. So those who claim that people are disrespecting the troops are just talking about the troops that agree with what they think.
Empires often crumble from within. Getting worked up about the flag to the point of wanting to hurt someone as opposed to wearing a tshirt that says I want to hurt hedge fund managers who knowingly tanked peoples entire pension funds or wanting to hurt congress people who wont fix a medical system that has families losing their home because a member gets sick is odd. Wearing a tshirt stating that you want to hurt anyone for any reason is more than odd.
Hope that guy doesnt run into a bigger guy whos wearing a shirt that says "If you wear a tshirt that says you want to stomp someone then Im going to stomp you". And so on.
Greg:
http://www.snopes.com/veteran-kaepernick-take-a-knee-anthem/
Greg:
--- Quote from: Mervap on September 30, 2017, 08:07:09 pm --- I was chatting with another co-worker about it and told him that and he seemed to think that I do not love my country as I should. I told him, in return, that the flag is a symbol, a large piece of cloth emblazoned with a design that we have agreed upon to fly in places of importance. It is not my country....it is not me or my family or loved ones.....it is not a person at all. He said that it represents us and our freedom....I told him that, if he were to stomp a mudhole in someone over disrespecting the flag that he would be not just breaking the law (assault), but he would be violating the freedom (of the other guy) that he claims to treasure. We ended the discussion amicably and said we'd just have to agree to disagree, still.....
Just wondering about y'all's take on it.
--- End quote ---
I think its interesting that a co-worker is trying to tell you what the flag should mean to you while stating that he believes the flag represents our freedom.
And its also interesting that every time I see countries ranked according to freedoms and rights the U.S. is rarely in the top 5. Most Americans think this is the freest country on earth.
Heritage rankings the U.S. is 17th: http://www.heritage.org/index/ranking
The CATO Institute has the US ranked as 23rd.
Not in the Top 10 of Freedom of the Press index: https://rsf.org/en/ranking
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