Put that flag up!

William asked a great question yesterday. He asked, “why is the flag at half-mast?” Thinking about it, he answered his own question, “oh, it must be because the Pope died.”

A week after the death of the Pope, the flags are still at half-mast. If the flags had been down for a day or two, I would have few complaints, but being humbled as a nation for a full week due to the fully anticipated death of a man seems obscene (especially here on our so-called “secular” campus). Sure, maybe the Pope was a good man. But a lot of good men die everyday. Men who’ve lived with integrity and honor and have made the world a better place are found in the obituaries of the local newspapers across the nation, and yet the flag is not lowered for these– even though many of these were not leaders of organizations that harbors and provides sanctuary for child-sex-offenders (ooh! cheap shot, I know).

He was just another man. John Paul II. The second. How pretentious. How is it that this man, for the last two weeks, has dominated the headlines of our nation’s newspapers (the Financial Times, thank god, made no mention of his death) and even warranted uninterrupted televised coverage of his funeral on CNN. People are born, people live, and people die. Why is the death of this single religious figurehead the biggest news story since invasion of Iraq?

Put the flag back up. Let’s be a proud nation, or let’s be a humiliated nation, but for the love of god, put the flag at half-mast for something worthy. Put it at half-mast to commemorate the 1,100+ soldiers that have been killed fighting Bush’s war in Iraq– who died fighting for their home and country. Perhaps if each of those soldiers, killed in the line of duty, gained a small portion of the news frenzy that the pope has, then maybe the American populace would be more adamant about bringing our troops home.