Just heard that congress has passed a resolution asking Americans to fly their flags for the next 30 days.

This idea is making it's way across the US....hopefully, we can all be a part of this tribute to those who have been lost in this tragedy.

----- To show those terrorists that we Americans stick together, FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 14th is "Flags Across America." All Americans are asked to display the American flag either in their homes or cars. Let's keep the meaning of UNITED in "United States".

Pass this onto as many people as you know. THANK YOU. God bless America and her citizens.

-- Anonymous, September 13, 2001

Answers

"and her citizens." Um, and her legal resident aliens, too :)

-- Anonymous, September 13, 2001

Anyone have the rules for displaying the flag? Would be helpful if it was included in any communiques about this.

-- Anonymous, September 13, 2001

http://www.ushistory.org/betsy/flagetiq.html

-- Anonymous, September 13, 2001

Natl Review

Fly the Flags No ribbon crisis.

September 13, 2001 6:00 p.m. he first thing I saw when I walked out of my apartment yesterday morning was a red, white, and blue bandanna stuffed in someone's back pocket.

Flags are being sold on the street. They are plastered on the back of trucks and hang out of windows, or are draped around the shoulders of people walking. Tiny ones are waved in people's hands.

One of the more heartening things about the reaction to Tuesday is that so far this is a flag-waving "crisis" — not a yellow-ribbon, pink-ribbon, or black-ribbon crisis. The one lapel-ribbon I have seen was worn by Sen. Barbara Mikulski last night, and it was red, white, and blue.

This is an important symbolic matter because the flag is redolent of honor and country. The ribbons reek of sentimentality and victimology. They were popularized, after all, during the Iranian hostage crisis, a period of national humiliation.

In general, there has been a remarkable lack of public weepiness, given the horrific circumstances. Even after this heartbreaking catastrophe, the public storyline has featured duty, not emotions; resolve, not powerlessness.

We have heard of the firefighters who sacrificed their lives so that others might be saved, of Barbara Olson calling to ask what she could do after her plane was hijacked, of the awe-inspiring acts of heroism of the passengers on the plane that crashed near Pittsburgh.

NR has complained often about the feminization of America, the softness that characterizes our culture. But wars can change everything, and it may be that these attacks have burrowed deep into the national character, where beneath the layers of blather and psycho-nonsense, something sterner and stronger still exists.

We, and the rest of the world, will know soon enough, as the country begins to wage its war, as Paul Wolfowitz put it this morning, "to end" terrorist-sponsoring states.

-- Anonymous, September 14, 2001