Tuesday:

They took Mrs. Bloomingberger today. I was washing a rack of dishes and could see through the kitchen window as the Support the Troops Police marched up to her apartment, bashed down the door and dragged the poor old gal away. They said she didn’t support The Troops enough.

I thought she supported The Troops just fine. You know, baked them cookies, sent them pen-pal letters—the weekly minimum amount of supporting The Troops, as required by law. Of course, Mrs. Bloomingberger wished she could support The Troops even more. She just loved those boys. But she was an elderly widow and couldn’t get around the house like she used to. Baking cookies was a job in and of itself these days, especially when you bake them from scratch.

Not that any of this mattered to the Support the Troops Police. They deemed it “insufficient” that she only supported The Troops the minimum amount as required by law. So a new law was drafted to expedite her arrest. It was called the Patriot Act XIII and it mandated that all citizens were legally required to do more for The Troops than was the weekly minimum legal requirement and that they could monitor your emails and phone calls to make sure you were complying.

The Pledge of Allegiance is in the news again. This exhausting debate over whether the phrase “Under God,” belongs in the Pledge is a potent distraction from the real problem with this thing. The real problem with the Pledge of Allegiance is that we have a Pledge of Allegiance in the first place.

“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.” The whole thing seems a little Orwellian for my taste: The systematic programming of American Youth, the assembly-lining of an idea, the pressure to conform – it’s all there. What’s worse, we are asking children to pledge to an entity about which they know very little: These kids know nothing about foreign policy, nothing about history, or war, or death. They don't even know the words of the pledge. When I was a kid I thought the line "And the Republic" was "Amanda Republic." I didn't know who Amanda Republic was and why I should be pledging allegiance to her but I made the pledge anyway because that's what was expected of me. So how can we ask children to make such a powerful, eternal, pledge of allegiance with those unknowing child-brains of theirs? It’s like tricking someone into signing a contract before he/she has read it. I know one thing for certain: if I knew about America then what I know now, I’d be like, “Whoa Teach! Slow down there! – You want me to pledge whatchima to whozit now? Sorry, I don’t know anyone named Amanda Republic and I’m not signing anything till my lawyer gets here.”

Probably by now you’ve heard of the U.S. Army veteran named Jim Broussard who recently cut down a couple of flags above a Reno bar because the bar owner (a Mexican-American) was flying a Mexican flag above the Stars and Stripes.

When Broussard heard about this abomination, he marched down to the Cantina El Jaripeo and—with television cameras rolling—cut down both flags. He tossed the Mexican flag on the ground, raised the U.S. flag to the camera and blurted, “I’m Jim Broussard, and I took this flag down in honor of my country.” Then he ranted for a few more moments and ended by saying that the bar owner would have to fight to get his flag back.

Now, it is true that the flag code prohibits flying the U.S. flag below any other. Naturally, there has been much discussion about whether Broussard’s actions were patriotic or criminal, but I think an even better question is, “Should flying another flag above the U.S. flag even be illegal in the first place?”