For all our non veterans out there!

[bwaites]

BW,

Much as I love ya, I gotta call you on this one. I'm afraid that if a nonveteran raises a hand to stop a flag-burning protest, they will find their blows blocked by men with tears in their eyes -- veterans -- who are watching the flag burn. Veterans (myself included) know that Washington did not freeze in the snows of Pennsylvania, Lincoln was not given over to the ages, and King did not lie bleeding on a Memphis balcony so that any of their children would ever fear to voice their opinions -- no matter how noxious those opinions may be.

Maybe it would be better for the nonveterans, if they come across a group of wild-eyed zealots outside a church where a soldier is being laid to rest, screaming obscenities and reveling in the death of one of our best, to take off their hats and join the line of honest people who stand between those idiots and the mother grieving her child. Those fools have their right to speak freely, but we have the right to interpose ourselves, peacefully, between them and those they would harm.

And, to everyone, veteran and nonveteran alike, if you hear someone singing the Star Spangled Banner in Spanish, or Gaelic, or Hmong or Otero, or Dine -- or Arabic -- stand up and take off your hat. Those words are holy in any language. They lose none of their power in translation because they were not written only for the sons of Englishmen, and the sons of other tongues have bled and died alongside the children of the Pilgrims across this nation's wars. As long as we hear those words, then this question will be purely rhetorical:

Oh decid! Despliega aún
Su hermosura estrellada
sobre tierra de libres,
la bandera sagrada?

Sorry to disagree with you, my friend.

The post was in jest, tongue in cheek.

And although the words have been translated, it is in English that the song carries its power. It is the melting pot where English unites the masses of immigrants that creates the inter binding strength that created and has sustained the nation. No nation without a common language can maintain that strength. We are weakened when we do so, as millions of immigrant parents recognized when they demanded that their children speak English instead of another mother tongue.