Got flag? Well now you do

I was driving around Orland on Memorial Day, looking for homeowners flying U.S. flags to do a short story. It was shorter than I expected because most of the homes were, shall we say, flag-challenged.

That’s no disrespect to Orland; you could see the same thing (or not see it) in Colusa, Corning, Willows, Williams and just about any town or city you could name. Some folks have flags and don’t bother to display them, but I suspect many households don’t have them at all. When most of your money goes to food, housing and gas, a flag doesn’t rank high on the shopping list.

But that doesn’t mean folks wouldn’t fly flags if they had them. So here it is, a U.S. flag to clip out and tape, glue or staple in a prominent place that’s worthy of the colors. We did something similar after 9/11 when I worked at Lake Tahoe, and seeing those flags up in homes and businesses around town made me feel pretty good about my chosen profession.

A quick note, mainly to avoid the phone calls: Although this flag is oriented vertically on the page, it’s meant to be displayed horizontally. That’s how most people display it, so that’s how we’re printing it. If you like it – and I hope you do – we’ll print it even bigger next year.

And if you don’t like it? Well, that’s your right, the sort of right that we try to uphold even when people don’t fully grasp the concept of limited government. The editorial at left was first published by a sister newspaper in Freedom Communications, and we reprint it proudly here.

We’re not printing the flag to curry favor or make us look more patriotic than the next guy. We’re printing it so people will display it, think about it, talk about it and respect it as the symbol it’s intended to be. The skies may be smoky and the fireworks in short supply, but you can honor your country in your living room if you want to. Whether it’s this flag, a cloth one or a plastic one made in China, fly it proudly.

Michael S. Green is interim editor of Tri-County Newspapers. Contact him at 934-6800 or mgreen@tcnpress.com.