This post last night provoked a fair amount of mail. And I wanted to give you a taste of it, before running out here. (Why should you care about my personal schedule? Good point. Sorry.) Many readers wrote to say, “I’m not Jewish, but I’ve actually thought about what I could do to help Israel, if they really came under the gun” — that is, more under the gun than they long have been. “I’d find a way to get there. I don’t know what I’d do, or whether I’d be of any use at all. But I’d want to be there. The fate of the Jews and the fate of humanity are linked, somehow.” I found the following line especially amusing — it came from a lady in Sacramento: “No, not Jewish. Not even much of a Christian. Just another freedom-loving American who supports Israel.” A different reader reminded me what it was like for Sarah Palin, when she was first nominated (in the late summer of ’08, I mean). Bear in mind that Palin is just about the most philo-Semitic politician in Christendom:

Florida Democratic Congressman Robert Wexler of Florida came out swinging at Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain immediately after he named Gov. Palin as her running mate. He accused her of backing ‘Nazi sympathizer” Pat Buchanan in a previous election and said that Sen. McCain’s choice was a “direct affront to all Jewish Americans.”

Ah, the Democratic party. The party of reason and humanity. Don’t think so? Just ask ’em. (And for the above-quoted article, go here — kind of interesting to read, two years after the fact.) Finally, many readers wrote to give examples of displaying flags other than your own. Sometimes it’s right and proper. Sometimes a human impulse — a praiseworthy one — impels it. I was especially pleased that a reader sent me this link: which shows a series of stamps that our government put out during World War II. The stamps showed the flags of countries that we, and our allies, were working to liberate: to be specific, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Norway, Luxemburg, Holland, Belgium, France, Greece, Yugoslavia, Albania, Austria, Denmark, and Korea. Yeah, sometimes such a thing is appropriate, and more than appropriate. Solidarity, you know.