Mark Levin fans don’t need a reason to waive or wear an American flag — we do it anyway, on more days than not. While countering anti-war protestors seems a noble effort, it is hard on the eyes; we have better people to see and care for and little time for fools. Yet I’d venture a good many of his fans read with admiration about the American Sheepdogs in the Wall Street Journal’s opinion page yesterday, especially those of us who know one particularly gutsy lady among them, Honest Conservative.

In 2001, Mr. Davis retired from the Navy and ended up settling in West Chester, where he spent 2006 and 2007 watching antiwar protesters rally each Saturday from 11 a.m. until noon outside the courthouse near his apartment. The Chester County Peace Movement, Mr. Davis would later learn, had been demonstrating at the site since March 2003, when the U.S. invaded Iraq. At first he hoped someone would challenge the protesters, speak up for the troops, and defend their mission. On Sept. 8, 2007 he decided that someone had to be him.

Mr. Davis had been building to such a decision for a long time. He was just a kid during the Vietnam War, but he is still bothered by the disrespect heaped on returning Vietnam vets in the 1960s and ’70s. In part that is because, in 1967, Mr. Davis attended the funeral of a man he idolized – his sister’s boyfriend, Marine Lance Cpl. Alan R. Schultz from Levittown, Pa. Schultz was killed by mortar fire in Vietnam. “Al was a great guy,” Mr. Davis remembers. “When we got the word that he had been killed, I felt the bottom fall out. I cried the rest of that summer.”

Even today, Mr. Davis can’t look at an antiwar protest without thinking that Schultz, his comrades and their modern-day counterparts are being disrespected. So after seeing the war protesters each week, Mr. Davis said to himself, “Not this war. Not this time.” “We’re not silent anymore,” Mr. Davis told me. “We refuse to let antiwar protesters have the stage to themselves.” Not that he wants to stifle dissent. He just doesn’t want to go unanswered the signs and protests that he believes encourage the enemy and demoralize U.S. troops. So, sign in hand in September, he walked to the corner praying he would have the strength to stand there, to be seen and heard.

Seen he was. Though there was plenty of room on the corner, he says he was bumped, shoved and challenged. One person asked, “Do you live in fear?” Another demanded, “Why don’t you go and serve?” “They had that corner for five years, every Saturday, unopposed,” Mr. Davis told me. “They couldn’t stand the thought of one person having a sign they couldn’t tolerate.”

More people than the antiwar protesters took notice. A few weeks after he started his own weekly protests, Mr. Davis had about 40 sign-holding, flag-waving supporters at his side, thanks to support from the Gathering of Eagles, a national organization supporting the troops… READ THE REST.

June 14 — Flag Day — is on a Saturday this year. Sounds like a good day to take a drive through the country, towards Chester County, down east from me.