Run Them All Down the Flagpole and See Who Salutes

We almost made it an entire month without a flag controversy in Westminster.

Most cities have a flag dispute every, oh, 50 to 60 years. Westminster has one every few weeks. Maybe the city likes being on CNN.

Just a suggestion: How about a permanent ordinance banning the flying, displaying or possession of all flags within city limits. No Republic of Vietnam flags. No former South Vietnam flags. No American flags (lapel version or full-size). No California state flags. No Dodger or Angel pennants.

I'd make it this direct: If it flaps in the breeze, it's illegal in Westminster.

Yes, that might pose a 1st Amendment problem, but I'm sure the Founding Fathers would gladly have granted Westminster a waiver, given that its citizenry seem incapable of dealing sensibly with any issue involving a flag.

Besides, many Westminster residents indicated they didn't care about the 1st Amendment earlier this year when they insisted a shop owner remove his flag of the Communist-backed Vietnamese government.

With that controversy out of the way, residents needed a new one. Increasingly inventive with their flag hang-ups, they came up with the current dispute, which unfurled as follows:

To commemorate the fall of Saigon in April of 1975, a group called the U.S. Army Ranger Assn. has in recent years sponsored the side-by-side display of both the U.S. flag and that of the former Republic of South Vietnam. For several days in April, the group displays the flags on light poles along Bolsa Avenue in Little Saigon, the city's shining monument to immigrant assimilation into American society.

In the past, the City Council has agreed to the displays, even knowing that some other residents didn't like the idea of the U.S. flag sharing time with a Vietnamese flag.

But not this year.

The City Council this week voted 3 to 2 against the flag display. New council member Kermit Marsh provided the swing vote, saying he was deferring to the wishes of veterans groups in opposing the display.

It apparently has stuck in the craws of U.S. veterans that, although protocol dictates that the American flag not be flown in this country beneath or even the same height as another flag, that has been ignored in Little Saigon.

Not even a compromise, in which the Vietnamese flag would fly four inches below Old Glory, swayed the council majority.

A Vietnamese spokesman said the decision smacked of jingoism or anti-Vietnamese sentiment.