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No 'right' to patriotism in the workplace
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A hospital supervisor in Arlington, Texas, is upset because her boss made her remove an American flag she hung in her office in anticipation of Memorial Day weekend.
Debbie McLucas is one of four hospital supervisors at Kindred Hospital in Mansfield. Last week, she hung a three-by-five foot American flag in the office she shares with the other supervisors.
When McLucas came to work Friday, her boss told her another supervisor had found her flag offensive. "I was just totally speechless. I was like, 'You're kidding me,'" McLucas said.
McLucas' husband and sons are former military men. Her daughter is currently serving in Iraq as a combat medic.
Stifling a cry, McLucas said, "I just wonder if all those young men and women over there are really doing this for nothing."
Well, no, Mrs. McLucas, the young men and women aren't fighting for nothing -- they're fighting for the state. But even though McLucas mistakenly believes that our soldiers are fighting for her freedom and wonders "what other freedoms" she'll lose "before all is said and done" if she's not allowed to display her flag at work, she should take solace in the fact that her fears are misplaced.
Because the report makes reference to Kindred Hospital Corporation and Kindred Hospital Corporate Headquarters, one can safely assume that Kindred is a privately owned and operated hospital (even though I'd guess that, like most, the corporation is the beneficiary of government grants). Therefore, because there is no right to free speech in the private sector, Mrs. McLucas has no case. The Bill of Rights is a compact -- albeit a crappy one, but I digress -- between the federal government and its citizens, not between private citizens.
But even in the event that Kindred were a public hospital, one would be hard-pressed to argue that a supervisor should have any less right to prevent an employee from hanging an American flag than she would to prevent that same employee from hanging a pornographic calendar or an alarm clock set to go off every other minute. In short, the problem is public funding of facilities and institutions in the first place, not the directors and supervisors tasked with operating them.
Oh, and for the record, if Mrs. McLucas really is worried about the preservation of her freedom, perhaps she'll consider the viewpoint of her protesting colleague, who likely understands that individual liberties are the sacrificial lamb of America's wars.
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