This is something I have noticed with increasing ire over the past few decades. When Americans go to foreign lands, we must respect the customs and social niceties of those lands. And when people from other lands come to America, we must respect their customs and social niceties.

Which doesn't seem to leave a lot of room for anybody to respect OUR customs and social niceties!

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I'm still trying to figure out which button I press while in another country to get English.

Doesn't take a mind-reader.

Why would they be offended by the American flag IN AMERICA seems somehow more to the point.

Indeed.

Remember the old joke: How do you identify the American tourists in Europe? They're the ones with the Canadian flag on their backpacks.

When we have a Dominion Day bar-b-que at the McCallum household, and our American chums show up wearing the colours that never run, we're far from offended. We're in the United States after all.

Similarly, while I'll wear my Team Canada sweater during the Olympics, and a Maple Leaf t-shirt on Canada Day, I keep both in the drawer on the 4th of July. Again, we're in the United States, and that's a day to show some gratitude for my adopted homeland.

...if those kids wore American shirts every day, it would be one thing. If they just wore them on that one day? Doesn't take a mind-reader.

But, Mike, you ARE assuming the point was a make trouble.

When the Oilers come to town and visit the Shark Tank, I may be wearing the Copper and Blue behind enemy lines, but it's understood I'm there to support my team and we're all part of the great hockey family.

If -- yeah, another if -- the school was making a big deal out of Cinqo de Mayo and trying to turn it into a Mexican Pride Day, I do not see it as unreasonable that someone might want to display their pride in the United States.

And you've got to admit that an Oilers sweater or a Red, White and Blue t-shirt is a far sight different from wearing a shirt to the hockey rink that says "Sharks Suck" or a shirt to school on Cinqo de Mayo that says "Wetbacks Go Home".

Second, who do you know that wears a flag shirt anyway? On a holiday or no? What lousy fashion sense! How gaudy and tacky! You really wear a Maple Leaf shirt? Why? I mean, I guess I'm from a different school of fashion, but I like to go designless, and usually matching singular colors - usually black for me, but at work, I will wear a blue shirt or light green, sometimes red, with black slacks, or when teaching I wear a black suit, white shirt and black tie.

At my most tacky, I do have some shirts with skulls on them, and a few tropical designs, but even then, I feel like I'm pushing my luck.

I do have some political t-shirt a friend made for me that I wear around the house, as PJ, or while working out in the gym - pictures of Malcolm X, and what not, but not for wearing out of doors in public. Or my giant lot of Black Lizard Crime Books t-shirts I have from when I managed a book store. I use those as around-the-house shirts.

Then again, I'm currently living in an area where I'm constantly blown away by toothless meth-heads walking around the whulmart in their pyjammas and slippers. I wasn't meant for these times...

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Which would very quickly be shown as an example of where Freedom of Expression is jealously protected -- except this time!

You have the freedom of speech as dictated in the first amendment, but that doesn't give anyone the right to say or do whatever they want, whenever. When you are attending school you have to act and dress appropriately, or you will be asked to amend whatever you have done that's out of line. If I walk into a bar and call the bartender a cunt, surely he will ask me to leave. My freedom of speech was not silenced - I spoke, and there were consequences for my actions. If I go to your house and call your wife a whore and you going to sit around sniff about freedom of speech? Going to talk about freedom of expression?

That's not Nazi tactics, that's the way things work.

Those kids can wear flags all up and down the street, but the principal of the school has to keep order and he, right or wrong, was under the impression that this was some passive agressive bully act, and in an effort to keep order, he asked the kids to turn the shirts inside out, take them off or return home to change. That's his job as the administrator of a school. The kids could leave the school and wave the flags all they want on their way home, they could return to their homes that are draped in flags. But while under the administration of the school, they have to follow the rules of the school.

The kids, likewise, could not get up in class and exercize their freedom of expression by calling the girl in the front row a cock-gobbling whore.

Or could they? Is that what you guys are pushing for?

Look - be for or against bullying in school, but don't sully this debate with misunderstandings of how freedom of speech works.