Politician has odd definition of "freedom"

I once worked at an office with a boss who had an odd method of administration.  She LOVED the whole teamwork process, groups of employees working together to arrive at decisions by consensus. The problem was, she hated the outcomes and usually overruled the decisions that had been arrived at after long discussions.  She wanted to empower her employees, but she wanted to be in charge at the same time.

I was reminded of this during the recent flap a couple of weeks ago when it was announced that a student group at UC Irvine had voted to ban the American flag from their meeting room.  Actually, they did NOT vote to ban the American flag, they voted to ban ALL national flags as a sign of  . . . something about inclusiveness, universal brotherhood, I don’t know.  We’re talking about college kids here.

Of course California legislators responded in their typically thoughtful manner.  California Republican Senator Janet Nguyen announced she and her GOP colleagues would introduce a state Constitutional Amendment that prohibits state schools from prohibiting displays of the American flag.  She said she was doing this because, as a Vietnamese immigrant, she felt the flag stood for freedom.

So she will teach these punk kids about freedom by forcing them to do something that they voted not to do in a democratic vote?  This reminds me of the joke told by a comedian (maybe Bill Cosby, I’m not sure) about a father spanking his son and shouting, “This will teach you not to hit people smaller than you!”

She doesn’t seem to have a problem with the banning of other national flags, so I guess the United States is the only country in the world that has freedom.  England has a totalitarian dictatorship run by an aging monarch; France holds regular elections but French voters are probably too busy watching Jerry Lewis movies to participate; Germany appears to have a democratic government, but Adolph Hitler was democratically elected and look at what happened after that.

Senator Nguyen loves freedom so much she’s going to force students to do something they voted not to do.  She’s yet another politician who doesn’t seem to listen to the words that come out of her mouth.  Freedom means letting people make decisions you disagree with.  Senator Nguyen should work harder at giving people freedom and less time trying to take it away.