Johnny Cash: Ragged Old Flag

 


 

See: “American Flag Banned … in America?! At Yet Another California School, Officials Grant Reconquista Students Veto Right.”

I couldn’t tell my son of Cody Alicea’s debacle at Denair Middle School in Stanislaus County, without showing him a tape of an aged, raspy-voiced Johnny Cash telling his story, “Ragged Old Flag.”

Back in 1985, I enjoyed the hospitality of then-85-year-old law professor Erich Fechner, and his wife, who was a doctor of psychology, at their handsome home in
Tübingen.

Professor Fechner gave me an inscribed copy of his Rechtsphilosophie (Philosophy of Law), and journal prints of some of his scholarly articles. (He was a libertarian, though not in any sense resembling today’s American glibertarians.)

I was still an Orthodox Democrat then. Ronald Reagan was president, and the conversation naturally came around to him. I said that I didn’t much care for Reagan, “Aber er ist nun mein President.” (“But he is, after all, my Preisdent.”) The old gent replied, “Sie sind Patriot” (“You’re a patriot.”).

“You’re a patriot.”

I thought then and still do that it was as fine a compliment as anyone had ever paid me.

Nicholas Stix

Thanks to Carters01.