If you were to poll the members of America's armed forces on the question of what they signed on to fight for, chances are you'd have to scroll a long way down the list before you got to: "So government could push people around more."
Yet that's just what Del. Scott Lingamfelter is proposing. The Prince William Republican was so upset by the dispute between Col. Van Barfoot and the Sussex Square homeowners' association that he plans to introduce a bill in the next General Assembly session. The legislation would force homeowners' associations to let combat veterans display the American flag in any manner permitted by federal law. Short of a flagpole tall enough to interfere with commercial airline traffic, that means just about anything goes.
If there were some kind of prize for missing the point, Lingamfelter ought to win it. Combat vets fought for the American ideals of liberty and equality before the law -- not to win government restrictions granting special privileges to their own selves. People who join communities governed by homeowner associations agree to live by the rules when they join the group. They also can contest the rules, and the group usually has ways of resolving those disputes.
Either way, it's none of the government's business. If Lingamfelter doesn't like the rules in Sussex Square, then he shouldn't move there. That's how these things work. The General Assembly has no more business telling homeowners' associations what bylaws to write than it has telling the Catholic Church how to pick a pope. Our personal sympathies lie with Barfoot, but this is not a matter for the Virginia General Assembly.
In a statement that should have been read with "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" playing in the background, Lingamfelter said he wasn't drafting the legislation for Barfoot: "I'm doing this for every grunt who slogged through some rice paddy, or fought in some desert environment, who stuck his neck out there for his buddy and was decorated for valor."
Just as long as he doesn't think he's doing it for the Declaration, the Constitution, or even the American flag -- none of which authorizes lawmakers to act like self-appointed Napoleons. Confronted by situations they find abhorrent, people often say, "there oughtta be a law." But in this case, there oughtn't.
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