The brief video of a child brought before an informal hearing at the charter school Vanguard School, in Colorado, is not as outrageous as many controversial videos are.  There was no radical left-wing mob.  There was no violence.  There were no hate-inspired placards being waved about.  Nothing got burned down.  On the contrary, the Democrat governor of the state opposed the leftist position, and the student prevailed.

There is, however, a backdrop, one that should inspire much more outrage than has occurred.  What angered me, of all things, was the very nice teacher, smiling and soft-spoken, who had removed a child from class because he was displaying some forbidden symbols on his backpack.  The child did in fact remove some symbols of guns, but he refused to remove an illustration of the Gadsden Flag, a symbol of the American Revolution of 1776.

One might be tempted to say that it was all a misunderstanding.  The very nice lady meant well.  Her demeanor was not at all hostile or aggressive.  She displayed no anger.  She even said that the "last thing" she wanted was for the boy to be removed from class. As the joke says, it may have been the "last thing," but it was still on the list.

The teacher complained that the Gadsden flag is associated with slavery.  Very well; in the eyes of the left, everything is associated with slavery, or racism and/or homophobia.  The typical phrase is "some people find it offensive."  When did you ever hear the left complain that some conservatives, or some patriots, or some Christians, find something offensive, and therefore, it should be banned for everyone else?

When it was pointed out to the teacher, by school officials, that the Gadsden flag had nothing to do with slavery, she fell back on the familiar-sounding excuse: I was enforcing the policy.

It is at this point that the nice lady should have been asked some pointed questions.

1. Do you know as much about American history as every public-school teacher should know?
2. Before condemning the Gadsden flag as racist, what sources did you research to find out if that is true?  (It is not.)  Did you do any research, or were you just relying on your bias?
3. Look at that American flag on the wall.  Do some people associate it with a racist country?  If they do, should that flag be banned for everyone?
4. Have you ever heard the phrase, "I was only following orders"?  Who made infamous that excuse?  Was it accepted?

In a similar case, a student is being forbidden to fly a large American flag on his pickup truck in the school parking lot.  The reason given is that "some" have complained.  Their complaints apparently override the First Amendment.  Why does the school not find its own American flags to be "a distraction"?

Meanwhile, at York Catholic High School, LGBT allies are protesting a Catholic school policy not to fly a so-called "Pride flag" on the school grounds.  Apparently, the rule is, you must not fly flags that the social left dislikes, but you must fly those that social conservatives dislike.

I think that is what the left calls "equity."

Image: InSapphoWeTrust via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0.