By Staff
The recent run on American flags that has left shelves bare in stores throughout the country has had an impact locally as well.
Apparently some low-life individuals think that it's either fun to steal American flags, or they want one so bad, they're willing to resort to any level of indecency to get one.
These folks should be ashamed.
The blood of thousands of Americans was paid for those flags, some soldiers, some civilians. Consider the dead souls that stir the breeze that waves our flags, those hundreds of thousands of people who paid the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom.
The soldiers of two world wars, a revolution to be free from tyranny and a war fought on our home soil to protect the solidarity of a group of divided, yet united states, all paid dearly for that piece of cloth that so beautifully waves over our city.
Yet we have people among us who don't have respect for them, for the businesses that place flags in storefronts, for the residents of our city and for our mourning nation that lost thousands of its own in a senseless act of cowardice and terror.
The thought that someone here would steal a sacred symbol of pride, freedom and prosperity is a grim one, indeed.
Whoever you are out there, stop and consider what you are doing and why you are doing it. If you want a flag of your own, stealing one is the wrong way to get one. It goes against everything that the flag stands for, and it illustrates how little the people who fought and died for your freedom really mean to you. Upon considering these two things, stealing a flag for patriotic reasons is an oxymoron two things that are mutually exclusive and that cannot exist at the same time.
And if you're stealing flags to show your disrespect for those who paid so dearly a price for it, let us know your intentions so that we can rally the city's business and civic leaders to come together and help you procure a one-way airline trip to a foreign country where you can live out your days under the care of a watchful and terrible dictator.
No city's pride in our country can so readily be seen as Atmore's due to the many banners of freedom that wave.
We encourage every resident to help keep it that way by calling the Atmore Police Department if you have any information about those who showed such blatant disrespect to our country and to our veterans through their theivery.