Originally Posted by Joe Obenberger

There are plenty who've died trying to get a chance of living in the place where that flag flies above them.

And, in Northern Virginia, across the Potomac from Washington, there are several vast fields of tens of thousands of war dead, many of them just kids, each of them having lain under that flag before their remains were committed to the earth. More than a few of them died liberating places like the Netherlands from Nazi occupation administered by the Gestapo, even though it was not their country and not their war. They gave their lives because their country - which flies that flag - told them to do so. There are fields just like it in France and Belgium, in the Philippines, in Hawaii. The blood of those men, serving under that flag, in two wars, consecrated that soil.

The reason that you don't get it is because it was never taught to you.

As a young child, my father, a veteran of the Pacific War, got me up from the curb to stand at attention each time that flag went past in a parade, and to put my hand over my heart. Later in life, as an officer of the United States Army, I was struck at how every single activity on every Army post in the world comes to a halt for a few minutes each afternoon, when the flag is lowered and the song "To the Colors" is bugled. Everyone from General to Private at attention, facing the post flagpole in salute; it's pretty touching and you should experience it at least once if you never have. What comes over you is a sense of dedication to something much greater than yourself, and to principles much higher than your own - all about the idea of defending Liberty and the dignity of individuals, upon which our Bill of Rights stands.

Every person will attach a different meaning to this national symbol - and it's easy to see from not only some posts here, but from much of the history of the past fifty years, that some hate this country and mock its symbols. All for different reasons, but with as much fervor as the Communists hated us for most of my lifetime and the Nazis before them - and I don't much care what anyone else thinks about when they think about the flag - but that's what it means to me, a symbol of some of the highest ideals, aspirations, and values that have ever been seen on this planet, flying over a land of imperfect persons who have only imperfectly attained those ideals, but who continue to work towards them.