Stupid liberal “gotcha” games: Rep. West flew a US flag under water!
Rep. Allen West is in hot water with a local blogger after he led a group of veterans on a scubadiving trip off the coast of his Florida district over the weekend and planted an American flag underwater on an artificial reef.
The blogger on the Broward-Palm Beach New Times’s website is accusing him of violating the United States Code by putting the flag in water and flying it below ground level.
“Rep. Allen West going diving off the coast of Deerfield Beach with a bunch of military veterans — except for the fact that he violated U.S. federal law in the process and provided a pictorial of himself doing so,” a blogger on the Broward-Palm Beach New Times’s website wrote early Tuesday morning.
The accusation which, incidentally, comes on Flag Day, is that West, a first-term tea-party-backed Republican, violated the Flag Code, which stipulates that “[t]he flag should never touch anything beneath it, such as the ground, the floor, water, or merchandise.”
But West’s office quickly threw cold water on the charge.
“Congressman West participated in an event to bring attention to scuba diving off the coast of his Congressional District,” West’s communications director, Angela Sachitano, said in an email to POLITICO.
“He went diving with several disabled veterans who fought to defend the American Flag and this nation. Congressman West displayed the American Flag on an underwater wreck as a sign of respect for the flag and the accomplishment for these veterans who each and every day work to overcome their disability. In addition, Congressman West would like to wish everyone a Happy Flag Day.”
As you can see here, several prominent liberal blogs jumped all over the issue, snidely playing gotcha with West, a patriotic American and honorable Afghanistan war veteran.
I’ll be the first to say that I don’t know the first thing about military code, but then again I don’t trust liberals to know it, either. That said, assuming what they’re asserting is right to the letter, let’s examine what their “outrage” tells us about liberals.
Whenever discussions about any given issue come to whether or not it’s right or wrong, liberals like to point to the issue’s “legality” as if that makes it right to do. We see this often with abortion. It’s “legal”; therefore it’s “ok to do.” By the same token, flag burning is legal and therefore “ok” and “acceptable” to the left. In fact, liberals view that as one of the most “patriotic” things you can do as an American citizen. Now West, OTOH, if he did “violate federal law” by flying the flag it was something done innocently in the name of patriotism in order to honor fellow veterans, show pride in this country, and celebrate Flag Day.
So, like if flag burning is “patriotic” even though highly offensive to most Americans, why couldn’t liberals take the same view of West’s flag flying under water, even though technically it is against federal law? I mean, both flag burners and flag wavers (even those who would fly it under water) are essentially both doing so with similar motives, right? Well, except for that whole “pride in country” thing, of course …
Liberals. So bloody predictable.