On Nov. 4, our family replaced the American flag in the park at the train depot in downtown Lula. Perhaps you have driven by and noticed how weather beaten, dirty, shredded and torn the flag had become.
We kept hoping and expecting the flag to be replaced by some civic organization, government group, veterans group or ordinary citizen. It just didn't happen. I wonder why or how that flag could be in such plain view and where pride has gone as it flew bravely, as all American flags do.
This is the third flag we have flown over the park. When our son, Jesse, deployed to Iraq in August 2005, we asked the Lula Area Betterment Association if we could fly a new flag in his honor. The response and show of members the day we put the flag up was gratifying.
When Jesse returned in February 2006, we took that flag down and replaced it with the flag we took down on Sunday. The flag that flew in Lula between August and February 2006 has been placed in a case with the flag that Jesse requested to be flown over the Marine Camp in Fallujah on Nov. 18 in honor of his grandfather, a former Marine who served in World War II in the Pacific, and his dad. We look upon both with humility and pride.
On Sunday, two members of our family from El Salvador helped Jim replace the flag. They understood better than most how proud we are of the American flag. It is a symbol of all we have and all we are.
Our son was in the mortuary affairs unit at Camp Fallujah and was responsible in retrieving fallen Marines and returning them home to their loved ones. The cost to replace the flag seems small in comparison to the cost some have had to pay. Freedom is not free, and anything associated with it should shine in its brightest light.
I am writing this letter because the next time the flag gets in the shape it was, I hope that someone else will look at it and take it upon themselves to step up and replace it. I will do it if necessary, but I hope someone else will care. It means a lot to a 29-year-old veteran of the Iraq war.
Jerrie Warren
Lula
Government robs us of freedoms little by little
I did not originate the following, but I feel that every citizen of the United States should know how to catch wild pigs.
You catch wild pigs by finding a suitable place in the woods and putting corn on the ground. The pigs find it and begin to come every day to eat the free corn. When they are used to coming every day, you put a fence down one side of the place where they are used to coming.
When they get used to the fence, they begin to eat the corn again and you put up another side of the fence. They get used to that and start to eat again. You continue until you have all four sides of the fence up with a gate in the last side. When the pigs, which are by now used to the free corn, start to come through the gate to eat, you slam the gate on them and catch the whole herd.
Suddenly, the wild pigs have lost their freedom. They run around and around inside the fence, but they are caught. Soon they go back to eating the free corn. They are so used to the fee corn that they have forgotten how to forage in the woods for themselves and eventually accept their captivity.
From all indications this is exactly what is happening to America today. Our politicians keep pushing us toward communism/socialism and keep spreading the free corn out in the form of programs such as supplemental income, tax credit for unearned income, tobacco subsidies, dairy subsidies, payments not to plant crops, welfare, medicine, drugs, etc., while we continually lose our freedoms, just a little at a time.
Even the village idiot should realize that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Also, it's a proven fact that you can never hire someone to provide a service for you cheaper than you can do it yourself.
Of all the problems such as drought, fire, flood, pestilence or disease plaguing contemporary America, by far the most dangerous is the free corn being used by politicians to trap the ignorant and unawares.
William P. Clark
Flowery Branch