Over Desensitized
Posted by Andy on April 24th, 2007
This is an interesting thing to think about.
WASHINGTON — A U.S. soldier says it’s ironic that American flags were flown at half-staff for victims lost in the Virginia Tech shooting rampage last week since “it is never lowered” when U.S. service members are killed in action.
President Bush issued a flag proclamation last week after a lone gunman, Seung-Hui Cho, killed 32 people in the deadliest shooting in U.S. history.
Army Sgt. Jim Wilt, the author of an internal Defense Department opinion piece that was briefly released to the public on Monday, questioned why flags are not lowered for fallen service members like Sgt. Alexander Van Aalten, a member of Wilt’s task force who was killed on April 20.
Here’s another interesting thing to consider as well. Dozens, if not hundreds of Americans are killed every single day across the country. Why is it that just the ones that unfold before our very eyes on CNN get the flag treatment? No really, in Cities across this country, there’s more people murdered every day than there was in these few hours in Virginia.
I think we do over do the ‘flag at half staff’ deal in America these days. I think that it loses its real meaning when it happens all the time. When people have to ask gee why is the flag down, or you see some up and some down because people can’t keep track of everything, it defeats the purpose of lowering the great flag of this nation.
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April 25th, 2007 at 9:59 am
I agree. In the last few years we have really watered down the meaning and significance of a flag at half staff.