Posted on 06/26/2005 2:47:31 AM PDT by mal
You are purposely twisting djf's words and thoughts.
I agree totally with this post.
To properly dispose of a flag that has been damaged or defiled we burn it. The flag in the hands of a traitor is certainly being defiled. Burning it is the patriotic thing to do. Flying the flag under false pretenses like the Democrats do, now that's something to get upset about.
The flag cannot properly be a T-Shirt.
According to the flag laws of the District of Columbia and most states, the words "Flag of the United States" include any flag, or picture of any flag, in which the colors, the stars, and the stripes may be shown in any number which, WITHOUT careful examination or deliberation, the average person may believe to represent the Flag of the United States.
UNITED STATES CODE
TITLE 36
CHAPTER 10
§176. Respect for flag
No disrespect should be shown to the flag of the United States of America; the flag should not be dipped to any person or thing. Regimental colors, State flags, and organization or institutional flags are to be dipped as a mark of honor.
(a) The flag should never be displayed with the union down, except as a signal of dire distress in instances of extreme danger to life or property.
(b) The flag should never touch anything beneath it, such as the ground, the floor, water, or merchandise.
(c) The flag should never be carried flat or horizontally, but always aloft and free.
(d) The flag should never be used as wearing apparel, bedding, or drapery. It should never be festooned, drawn back, nor up, in folds, but always allowed to fall free. Bunting of blue, white, and red, always arranged with the blue above, the white in the middle, and the red below, should be used for covering a speaker's desk, draping the front of the platform, and for decoration in general.
(e) The flag should never be fastened, displayed, used, or stored in such a manner as to permit it to be easily torn, soiled, or damaged in any way.
(f) The flag should never be used as a covering for a ceiling.
(g) The flag should never have placed upon it, nor on any part of it, nor attached to it any mark, insignia, letter, word, figure, design, picture, or drawing of any nature.
(h) The flag should never be used as a receptacle for receiving, holding, carrying, or delivering anything.
(i) The flag should never be used for advertising purposes in any manner whatsoever. It should not be embroidered on such articles as cushions or handkerchiefs and the like, printed or otherwise impressed on paper napkins or boxes or anything that is designed for temporary use and discard. Advertising signs should not be fastened to a staff or halyard from which the flag is flown.
(j) No part of the flag should ever be used as a costume or athletic uniform. However, a flag patch may be affixed to the uniform of military personnel, firemen, policemen, and members of patriotic organizations. The flag represents a living country and is itself considered a living thing. Therefore, the lapel flag pin being a replica, should be worn on the left lapel near the heart.
(k) The flag, when it is in such condition that it is no longer a fitting emblem for display, should be destroyed in a dignified way, preferably by burning.
This opens a bag of worms.
What is the flag?
A stiring stick in a martini?
A printed page in a newspaper after 9-11?
A design on a weldor's cap?
A bumper sticker?
A small item to wave as a political parade goes by?
A piece of private property bought at a store(made in China)?
Or an official flag from the US government given out to honor a vetran at his funeral? To schools, public buildings?ect.
What do you do with them when they are not needed?
The official flag is burned on FLAG DAY when worn out,but the others are tossed in the trash. Will one be prosecuted for that or will we only prosecute for offensive political statements when jerks burn them in piblic?
If an "official" flag is stolen from a public building and burned is one thing, but a "private property" flag being destroyed is totally different.
Much like the difference between grabbing a koran from a mohammedan and destroying it, and buying one at the book store and destroying it. One is the property of someone else and one is MY private property.
If there are any penalties or punishment for violation of that title and chapter I would think they wouldn't hold up based on the decision of the US Supreme Court.
If an amendment is passed and ratified that narrowly defines a flag and someone just wants to burn a flag, they'll just make sure it's a flag not defined in the amendment.
I don't know if anyone has noticed but since flag burning has been protected as free speech, there hasn't been a big problem of people burning flags. In fact, the last demonstrations I attended in DC, those on the other side weren't even carrying American Flags.
It's illegal to burn leaves or garbage, unless you throw an American flag over it first.
June 26, 2005
BY MARK STEYN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST
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The House of Representatives passed a constitutional amendment on flag burning last week, in the course of which Rep. Randy ''Duke'' Cunningham (Republican of California) made the following argument:
''Ask the men and women who stood on top of the Trade Center. Ask them and they will tell you: Pass this amendment."
Unlike Congressman Cunningham, I wouldn't presume to speak for those who died atop the World Trade Center. For one thing, citizens of more than 50 foreign countries, from Argentina to Zimbabwe, were killed on 9/11. Of the remainder, maybe some would be in favor of a flag-burning amendment; and maybe some would think that criminalizing disrespect for national symbols is unworthy of a free society. And maybe others would roll their eyes and say that, granted it's been clear since about October 2001 that the federal legislature has nothing useful to contribute to the war on terror, and its hacks and poseurs prefer to busy themselves with a lot of irrelevant grandstanding with a side order of fries, but they could at least quit dragging us into it.
And maybe a few would feel as many of my correspondents did last week about the ridiculous complaints of ''desecration'' of the Quran by U.S. guards at Guantanamo -- that, in the words of one reader, ''it's not possible to 'torture' an inanimate object.''
That alone is a perfectly good reason to object to a law forbidding the "desecration" of the flag. For my own part, I believe that, if someone wishes to burn a flag, he should be free to do so. In the same way, if Democrat senators want to make speeches comparing the U.S. military to Nazis and the Khmer Rouge, they should be free to do so. It's always useful to know what people really believe.
For example, two years ago, a young American lady, Rachel Corrie, was crushed by an Israeli bulldozer in Gaza. Her death immediately made her a martyr for the Palestinian cause, and her family and friends worked assiduously to promote the image of her as a youthful idealist passionately moved by despair and injustice. ''My Name Is Rachel Corrie,'' a play about her, was a huge hit in London. Well, OK, it wasn't so much a play as a piece of sentimental agitprop so in thrall to its subject's golden innocence that the picture of Rachel on the cover of the Playbill shows her playing in the backyard, age 7 or so, wind in her hair, in a cute, pink T-shirt.
There's another photograph of Rachel Corrie: at a Palestinian protest, headscarved, her face contorted with hate and rage, torching the Stars and Stripes. Which is the real Rachel Corrie? The "schoolgirl idealist" caught up in the cycle of violence? Or the grown woman burning the flag of her own country? Well, that's your call. But because that second photograph exists, we at least have a choice.
Have you seen that Rachel Corrie flag-burning photo? If you follow Charles Johnson's invaluable Little Green Footballs Web site and a few other Internet outposts, you will have. But you'll look for it in vain in the innumerable cooing profiles of the "passionate activist" that have appeared in the world's newspapers.
One of the big lessons of these last four years is that many, many beneficiaries of Western civilization loathe that civilization -- and the media are generally inclined to blur the extent of that loathing. At last year's Democratic Convention, when the Oscar-winning crockumentarian Michael Moore was given the seat of honor in the presidential box next to Jimmy Carter, I wonder how many TV viewers knew that the terrorist ''insurgents'' -- the guys who kidnap and murder aid workers, hack the heads off foreigners, load Down's syndrome youths up with explosives and send them off to detonate in shopping markets -- are regarded by Moore as Iraq's Minutemen. I wonder how many viewers knew that on Sept. 11 itself Moore's only gripe was that the terrorists had targeted New York and Washington instead of Texas or Mississippi: ''They did not deserve to die. If someone did this to get back at Bush, then they did so by killing thousands of people who DID NOT VOTE for him! Boston, New York, D.C. and the plane's destination of California -- these were places that voted AGAINST Bush!"
In other words, if the objection to flag desecration is that it's distasteful, tough. Like those apocryphal Victorian matrons who discreetly covered the curved legs of their pianos, the culture already goes to astonishing lengths to veil the excesses of those who are admirably straightforward in their hostility.
If people feel that way, why protect them with a law that will make it harder for the rest of us to see them as they are? One thing I've learned in the last four years is that it's very difficult to talk honestly about the issues that confront us. A brave and outspoken journalist, Oriana Fallaci, is currently being prosecuted for ''vilification of religion,'' which is a crime in Italy; a Christian pastor has been ordered by an Australian court to apologize for his comments on Islam. In the European Union, ''xenophobia'' is against the law. A flag-burning amendment is the American equivalent of the rest of the West's ever more coercive constraints on free expression. The problem is not that some people burn flags; the problem is that the world view of which flag-burning is a mere ritual is so entrenched at the highest levels of Western culture.
Banning flag desecration flatters the desecrators and suggests that the flag of this great republic is a wee delicate bloom that has to be protected. It's not. It gets burned because it's strong. I'm a Canadian and one day, during the Kosovo war, I switched on the TV and there were some fellows jumping up and down in Belgrade burning the Stars and Stripes and the Union Jack. Big deal, seen it a million times. But then to my astonishment, some of those excitable Serbs produced a Maple Leaf from somewhere and started torching that. Don't ask me why -- we had a small contribution to the Kosovo bombing campaign but evidently it was enough to arouse the ire of Slobo's boys. I've never been so proud to be Canadian in years. I turned the sound up to see if they were yelling ''Death to the Little Satan!'' But you can't have everything.
That's the point: A flag has to be worth torching. When a flag gets burned, that's not a sign of its weakness but of its strength. If you can't stand the heat of your burning flag, get out of the superpower business. It's the left that believes the state can regulate everyone into thought-compliance. The right should understand that the battle of ideas is won out in the open.
Steyn stuff!
Forget the substance of such laws and amendments. Why should SCOTUS be involved at all? At least the process of a constitutional amendment would reflect the will of the people, i.e., two-thirds of Congress and three quarters of the state legislatures must approve it. We wouldn't need constitutional amendments if SCOTUS would stay the hell out of social issues.
I don't know if anyone has noticed but since flag burning has been protected as free speech, there hasn't been a big problem of people burning flags.
SCOTUS used the pretext of it being a free speech issue to get involved just like they have twisted the Constitution to rule on other social issues, e.g., school prayer, private sector firing and hiring processes, political speech (they endorsed McCain-Feingold), racial discrimination, etc. There never was a big problem with burning flags even when the flag desecration laws were on the books, including the 60s and 70s. A Consititutional amendment is really Congress getting some cahones to take back some of the power of the legislative branch.
I wish I had gone to law school. I might know what the heck I'm talking about if I had, but if you look at post 24 there is a "should" in every paragraph of the Code. The SCOTUS probably saw an opening and stepped in it.
SCOTUS overturned a state law in Texas v. Johnson in 1989 and then in 1990 overruled parts of the the Flag Protection Act in United States v. Eichman. The infamous lawyer, William M. Kunstler, was involved in both cases against the State of Texas and the Federal government.
Good article. Those voting for such an amendment might as well be burning it themselves.
Thanks for the "ping", FRiend....
FMCDH(BITS)
Thanks! Steyn Bump
Interesting that so many Republicans support this amendment yet so many FR threads are against this amendment . . .
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