Senate Democrats Shoot Down GOP Amendment to Fly Only the American Flag over Government Buildings

On Thursday, Senate Democrats voted against a Republican-introduced measure that would have forbidden the federal government from flying any flag other than the American flag over government buildings.

As Fox News reports, the measure in question was introduced by Senator Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) as an amendment to the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which would have instituted the ban for all public buildings, from federal office buildings and courthouses to post offices.

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Commentary: Younger Parents Say Their Kids Are Indifferent to the Flag

A new survey suggests that younger parents don’t share the same values or priorities for civics education as their older peers. According to the survey, conducted by RealClear Opinion Research and funded by the conservative Jack Miller Center, nearly nine out of ten Americans agree that teaching children about our nation’s founding principles is “very important.” But seven out of ten don’t think schools are doing a good job of it.

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Commentary: That Star-Spangled Banner Yet Waves

Tennessee Star

To fly the flag is to honor the mystic chords of memory. It is to hear not a harmonious hymn of battle but the disharmony of peaceful dissent. It is to record the jangling discords of the march of freedom, not a symphony of complacency nor an orchestration of complicity in the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world. To fly the flag—to raise it on this day, Flag Day—is to celebrate the greatness of America.

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Commentary: A.G. Garland’s Use of Police Power Against Parents Could Be His Undoing

Destruction of the family has always been at the center of the collectivist project. In chapter two of The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels point out that the destruction of private property will never be complete until the “abolition [Aufhebung] of the family” is accomplished. The dream is perennial among snarling misanthropists. A couple of years ago, an interview in The Nation with a radical feminist explained that if you “want to dismantle capitalism” then you have to “abolish the family.”

It is worth keeping that in mind as the little drama of Merrick Garland versus the parents of America unfolds. I wrote about the attorney general’s absurd but troubling memorandum shortly after it was released on October 4. As all the world knows (but only some precincts of the world admit), Garland threatened to mobilize the entire police power of the state against parents. Why?

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