Posted on 10/03/2014 9:40:41 AM PDT by walford
“The American flag is not a symbol of racism or division,” Becker said. “It is the symbol of freedom and unity. Americans have fought and died to protect that flag, and now we are told to conceal it so we don’t offend Mexican aliens, some of whom entered this country illegally.”
Previously, Live Oak High School, in the San Jose suburb of Morgan Hill, had reports of problems between American citizens and Mexican students. The school sent the American kids wearing the American flag home but allowed the Mexican kids displaying the Mexican flag stay in school.
In 2009, a group of Mexican students marched and waved a Mexican flag around the Live Oak campus in front of all the school.
Some non-Hispanic students then raised the American flag on a tree to show their American patriotism. The Mexican group found this offensive, and then the two groups exchanged profanity-laced threats.
To fix the ‘problem’, the principal issued an order banning students from wearing Stars and Stripes shirts. If a student was caught in violation of the crime of wearing the American flag they would either have to turn them inside-out or go home. The incident garnered national attention as many expressed outrage that students were barred from wearing patriotic clothing.
Parents and a few lawmakers had argued that the actions violated the students’ Constitutional right to free speech.
In the original ruling, a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided that past problems at the school gave officials sufficient and justifiable reasons for the order. In its opinion, the court said that schools in general have wide latitude in curbing certain civil rights to ensure campus safety.
On Wednesday, the Federal Appeals Court said they will not reconsider the February ruling upholding the unconstitutional actions of a principal in a Northern California high school who ordered students wearing American flag shirts inside out during a 2010 Cinco de Mayo celebration.
The school’s actions “were tailored to avert violence and focused on student safety,” Judge Margaret McKeown said
The panel said the plaintiffs’ request for a rehearing had failed to gain a majority of votes on the 29-judge court. In a dissenting opinion, three conservative judges said the court should have reconsidered and reversed the February ruling as a violation of free speech.
The ruling “permits the will of the mob to rule our schools,” said Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain, joined by Judges Richard Tallman and Carlos Bea. He said the court was allowing students to silence others by threatening them with violence.
William Becker, a lawyer representing the students called Wednesday’s decision “outrageous” and said he’d likely take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
“(We) will not allow the politically correct judiciary to insult our flag,” he wrote in his blog.
In February, a three-judge panel ruled that it was not the court’s place to second-guess the school’s anti-violence efforts.
“The past events “made it reasonable for school officials to proceed as though the threat of a potentially violent disturbance was real,” Judge M. Margaret McKeown wrote for the panel.
But, in his blog, Becker said wearing an American flag to school is a symbol of patriotism, not aggression.
“The American flag is not a symbol of racism or division,” Becker said. “It is the symbol of freedom and unity. Americans have fought and died to protect that flag, and now we are told to conceal it so we don’t offend Mexican aliens, some of whom entered this country illegally.”
So as long as the other side resorts to blackmail and threat of violence, it will be the right thing to give in to them? This country didn’t used to operate that way.
Well said. Where does the appeasement end?
I’m right there with you.
The only way to deal with bullies is: “Right now!”.
However, I will relate when common sense took a hold of me.
A guy I knew was a rather large Somoan and a bit quick tempered.
One day, a manipulative little, filthy, manx he was dating claimed I was hitting on her.
Total lie and I hadn’t even been to that side of the bar yet, so I didn’t know they were even there.
So, my Somoan friend walks up to me and flat out says “I really like but, I hope you picked out grave site”.
“What?” I smiled and asked.
He tells me his Wench informed him that I had been trying to get with her all night.
Told him “Well, I just got here. So, I don’t think that’s a very credible accusation”.
His response stopped me dead cold.
“You calling my girl a liar?!” he angrily demanded
“Look, I normally will throw down with anyone but, let’s agree I’m going to lose this and very badly.
Knowing this and admitting it to you should be very telling but, while I don’t want to fight you, I am not going make this easy. I’ll lose but, I will give it my best shot” I responded.
So, he leaves me alone for the rest of the night.
The next week, he tells me his girlfriend admitted she made the whole thing up and he apologized for putting my in the position of a likely brain damaging event.
Still a good guy to this day and I lived.
Common sense just dictates a better choice sometimes.
You cannot win every battle anyway. It’s mathematically impossible and not even remotely probable.
It’s kind of like the following:
“We are not retreating. We are advancing in a different direction!”.
And that’s how the battle of Arden was won.
Just please.
The kids and district were vastly outnumbered.
Live to fight another day and maybe the little turds will grow up one day and figure out which country they’d really prefer to be in.
The funny part is that 97% of those kids will never, in their lifetime, visit Mexico.
Frauds...
“I have been saying that people on the right need to start employing civil disobedience, and calling it exactly that-I want to hear how the media spins civil disobedience by the right into something wrong, when they’ve praised it for decades when it was used by their favored victim groups.”
You can rally for an Islamic Caliphate, hating Whitey, Reconquista, communism, anti-Semitism, etc. and be perfectly safe — and even lionized by the media and championed by the Courts.
Fly the American flag and expect to be viciously attacked [and have the violence justified by wimps], abandoned by the Courts and even have conservatives blame you for not being “sensible” and keeping your patriotism to yourself.
The new Flag Day is May 5th.
This is how it all began in removing expressions of Christianity from the public square, and look where we now with that.
Hey! Go blow it yer keester!
The American kids aren’t victims. They are friggin Kewel!
You are making quite the leap and demonstrating just how unhinged you are emotionally, immature and intellectually unmoored by anything of reason.
Do you just casually let your mind wander, letting your emotions dictate a roll of the dice is better than a prudent choice?
That’s really how you live?
Besides that, for all your online bluster, you really are a miserable failure as a human being to consign a child to injury and in this instance certain death.
Explain, in your Omniscience and Omnipotent wisdom how you would have handled it and would likely be the outcome.
I’ll happily debate you and there is probability for your position to have an outcome where a kid doesn’t’ suffer.
“Look, I normally will throw down with anyone but, let’s agree I’m going to lose this and very badly.
Knowing this and admitting it to you should be very telling but, while I don’t want to fight you, I am not going make this easy. I’ll lose but, I will give it my best shot” I responded.
I drove a taxi for a total of 6 years and have several tracks of stitches on me because my shyte-taking gland is very poorly developed. I was bullied as a child and decided that I would rather bleed than be bullied as an adult.
You are justifying Americans holding back their free speech out of fear. The school and the Courts should have stood up for free speech and failed them. So the children should be pulled out. The cornerstone of education is freedom of expression. A school that does not allow that is incapable of educating anyone.
I’ll happily debate you and there is probability for your position to have an outcome where a kid doesn’t’ suffer.
And your personal attacks are gratuitous and unjustified.
You are the one getting all excitable.
Yes, this could be handled without putting any kids in harm’s way.
When the civil disobedience is in under way, the children are of course kept from school.
I am not justifying the holding back of Free Speech.
The American kids proudly demonstrated who they are but, they were going to lose badly, in a fight they didn’t anticipate nor wanted.
Look, these kids aren’t old enough to die for our country but, we are going to let em die over this?
I don’t think so and my conscience would eat at me for the rest of my life, knowing I could have taken an action to save their lives.
Oh, in regards to my Somoan friend, my little brother thought the same as you.
I sure didn’t want to fight him. Fought a couple other guys and one who slapped from across a table for something I didn’t even say(guy next to me said it) got a cracked tooth for doing it.
This after I explained what really happened and what the outcome was going to be.
He didn’t care, couldn’t be reasoned with and went to sleep for a few seconds.
He later apologized as well and I bought him drinks.
personal attacks are gratuitous and unjustified?
Is your head the shape of a donut?
“Apparently there are even going to be people on the right such as Vendome who would blame the victim for daring to express speech that the LaRaza and their Leftist sympathizers violently oppose.”
Where do you see me calling the kids victims or blaming them.
All of what you wrote is clap trap and divorced from a reality that never existed.
Does this mean we’re not going to be friends?
Don’t be silly.
Of course we’re friends.
Friends can discuss and debate issues of importance.
Democrats are intellectually fallow and emotional twerps...
Or maybe they are really are zombies, like Bob Hope said...
Let California go!!!
You are correct. My comment should have been directed to the original article.
Nether printable nor court seem to care about offending anyone but their preferred classes of people.
Most Americans are justifiably offended when Mexican Nationals invade our country and settle in our land wave their flags to the exclusion of us even having the right to wave our own.
If theses people were not invaders they would be assimilating and adopting not only the American way of life but the American flag as well.
Haven’t seen the case as argued, but this is not just a violation of free speech, it is a violation of equal protection.
We know that free speech can sometimes be curtailed-you can’t yell fire in a crowded theater is the example usually quoted, but you can’t let one person yell fire and while giving others the go ahead to yell fire.
If the school needed to prevent violence, there are many other things they could do, but if there is to be no Stars and Stripes, then there sure as h#ll shouldn’t be any other country’s flag.
If those who hate America have freedom of speech in America, but those who love America do not — due to fear of violence by bullies — we desecrate the memories of all who fought and died for our freedoms.
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