So what should Col. Barfoot do with the flag then, throw it on the ground? Perhaps he should stick the flag in his grill and burn it instead. Maybe that would satisfy this anti-US HOA.
This HOA is probably composed of people who, as children, probably abstained from saying the Pledge of Allegiance, and who were not rightfully bullied and harassed in school for it. Damn them indeed.
“So what should Col. Barfoot do with the flag then, throw it on the ground”?
...not at all. And I agree with another post that said the HOA will be embarrassed into letting him or into changing the HOA rules. I’m just saying that Barfoot signed an agreement that does not allow for a pole in the neighborhood.
“So what should Col. Barfoot do with the flag then, throw it on the ground?”
Perhaps he could fly it from a staff attached to his porch which apparently is allowed by the rules as there are others in his neighborhood who do just that.
Should the good Colonel have been allowed to abrogate all of the military regs he was subject to because he wanted to?
If the man agreed to the HOA rules, then he should abide by them or sell his house. His honor as an officer and a gentleman requires nothing less.
Your transmutation of the issue of his agreement into a suggestion to dishonor the flag does nothing to support any reasonable argument.
All the HOA needs to do is have a meeting and vote in a rule that 90 year old Medal of Honor recipients are exempt from the no flag pole rule. It’s not like there will be rash of them moving into the area.
Well, when they rejected his request for a 20+-foot pole, he could have asked them if a shorter pole was acceptable.
Or he could have asked if the community would consider putting up a pole on the common grounds (all the grounds were common, even his front yard).
While waiting, he could have bought a 5-dollar bracket and hung his flag off his wall, like his neighbors do. He claimed that hanging a flag off his wall at an angle would be “flying it half-mast”, but obviously that is not the case.
He could have simply appealed the ruling, or petitioned his neighbors to join him in asking for a re-hearing.
Often times an HOA will reject something, but be open to reconsideration if it turns out everybody is OK with it.
What he should NOT have done is ignored their ruling and put up a flagpole without permission.
And while I support him getting a ruling change so he can have a flagpole, I resent Mark Warner’s claim that the rules should be waived, and the HOA should act illegally, to allow this guy to have his flag since he’s a decorated war hero.
Nothing against decorated war heros, but being a hero doesn’t make you royalty, or mean the rules don’t apply to you. We don’t have a “flagpole exception” for veterans.
In fact, a hippie anti-war protestor has as much right to put a flag pole in their front yard as a decorated war hero.
But it’s not surprising that Democratic politicians are all urging that the rules don’t matter, that the guy should be able to do what he wants since it’s “popular” to say so.
Other than James Webb, I am betting that every one of these guys would be the first to show up to complain if someone put a large flagpole up without permission next door to THEIR homes.