Your daily World Cup update (Not a sports take*)

We liberated an article that was linked in a comment from B-Daddy from our previous WC update post.


It seems that some people in Germany are none too pleased that certain citizens there are displaying a high degree of patriotic temerity.

In the Berlin district of Neukoelln, a district dominated by Turkish and Arab immigrant families, Badr Muhammed and his cousin Yusuf Basal have hung a giant German flag - measuring 20 meters (22 yards) by five meters - outside their building.

"My family and I are excited about the German team's World Cup performance," said Muhammed. The cousins are originally from Lebanon and run a small grocery store on the ground floor of the building. Muhammed said his whole family is football crazy, and they're all die-hard supporters of the German team.


But displaying national pride in such an extrovert manner has drawn criticism in a country where rallying behind national colors is viewed with contempt by some who associate it with the Third Reich.

Muhammed said he has received threats from German far-left activists, who have tried to tear down the flag.

"They said we shouldn't show the flag in such a conspicuous way because it recalled the Nazi era," he said. "I reject such thinking because the flag for us means that we stand by this country as we were born and raised here. We've become German citizens and we just want to support our national team."

The flag proved popular with passers-by who were asked for their opinion by Deustche Welle. One woman said she saw it as something "quite different" for the neighborhood. A young Turkish man said the flag represented values such as unity, freedom and the rule of law in a country that is truly multicultural.

(italics, ours)

We pray that holds true here as well.



A couple of observations:

First, we're not surprised that the Lebanese family expressing those sentiments runs a small business. They're vested in their country. As such, there is compelling interest for them to see their country do well economically, socially and politically and this compelling interest naturally spills over into wanting to see their country's soccer team do well, also.

Instead of sitting around on the dole, blaming others for their failure and/or letting the seeds of hatred grow in their hearts after being planted there by a radical cleric, these people are instead, producers, wealth-creators and positively-contributing members of their neighborhood and Germany at-large.







Second observation: Completely anecdotal but in our neighborhood, at least, the houses that do fly Old Glory are usually the best-kept as well.




Imagine a world united around the rule of law, freedom of speech/religion and property rights. Imagine all the people uniting around these principles.

You may say that we're dreamers but we're not the only ones.

We hope someday you'll join us, so we can rid the world of crappy songs as well.


* We felt compelled to add this as we were informed our "sports-related" posts were summarily discarded. The pain.