My neighborhood free flags idea went wrong quick

By Jason Williams,
Taxpayers Association of Oregon
OregonWatchdog.com

You probably know by now that I am a very patriotic guy.  So I try to inspire my neighborhood by putting out free flags for people to pick-up.

This year I also put out a big baking dish full of red-white-blue beads with special USA themed decals on them.  Within just a few hours, someone came and took the whole container-full of beads including the baking dish itself.   So greedy.

Also, people upon taking the free flags would accidentally knock flags to the ground and then would not pick them up.  I don’t expect people to understand the proper protocol of an American flag and how it is never supposed to touch the ground and how dishonorable it is.   I do expect people to pick-up after themselves.

It is like someone leaving out cookies to cheer people up and people come by and steal all the cookies, the cookie dish, and and let cookies spill onto the ground.

The decline in politeness and civility is a result of a long-term trend of Americans no longer participating in community organizations.  Charities, churches, Rotaries, Elks, Kiwannas, Boy/Girl Scouts, school booster clubs, Chamber of Commerce meetings are all at record low attendance.  As people no longer associate with each other in community groups, they lose the cultural reinforced etiquette.

Also, the far-Left mindset encourages avarice.  For instance, popular progressive podcaster, Hasan Piker, told his listeners that it is OK to steal from corporations.  One Tik-Tok trend encouraged youth to be “quiet quitters” at work by doing the absolute minimum without getting fired.   A Democrat candidate in New York, who just won her primary, exclaimed that she once proudly wiped her dirty face on an American flag.  To the far-Left, tearing down cultural institutions and anything in power is a virtue.  This only contributes to an anything goes mentality.