Posted on 12/01/2016 7:56:25 AM PST by Kaslin
Well, look what’s back: the instantly compelling and ultimately confounding parlor game of “What do we do about flag burning?”
Dormant for years, largely because this is something virtually no one ever does, the flag burning issue is back. You could hear it knocking lightly when several idiotic pro athletes decided to lodge their concerns over policing issues by showing public disdain for the flag that is a symbol of the nation that has made them free and wealthy.
Throw in the Donald Trump victory, which has dredged up some of the most hateful and juvenile reactions in election history, and the atmosphere thickens. The final ingredient: a Tuesday Trump tweet proclaiming that “Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag -- if they do, there must be consequences -- perhaps loss of citizenship or year in jail!”
My head hurts.
Memories rush in from the talk shows I was doing in 1989, the year of the infamous Texas v. Johnson case, in which a cretinous young Communist named Gregory Johnson burned a flag at Dallas City Hall during the Ronald Reagan second-term nominating convention down the street.
The Supreme Court’s job was to determine whether flag-burning is constitutionally protected free speech. The 5-4 decision, made possible by the late Antonin Scalia’s reliance on his libertarian DNA, found that laws against “desecration” of the flag are a violation of rights.
It is always perilous to compile a list of things Americans should not be able to do simply because they are so infuriating. The thing that angers me may empower you; the thing we outlaw today may silence you tomorrow. If you envision banning only the things which are truly poisonous, hurtful, hateful and without merit, I invite you to meet the American Left, which is marching toward defining your Biblical beliefs and mine in exactly those terms.
The four dissenting justices did make a strong case against free-speech designation for flag-burning, calling it a substantial stretch to elevate a vulgar gesture to the level of the protected speech the founders sought to protect. They were right to point out that Gregory Johnson and every other flag-burning idiot since are not exactly the philosophical descendants of Thomas Paine.
So my desire today is to sidestep completely the gnashing standoff over whether the execrable act of flag-burning should be forbidden by law. Instead, I’ll share why it is a useless exercise to try.
The Trump tweet surely energized millions in his base who enjoyed the notion of consequences raining down on the chowderheads who choose to communicate through flag desecration. I confess that it struck a chord with me as well.
But if we examine how such penalties might be crafted, we run into multiple brick walls of impracticality. The moment we put our toes into the pool of outlawing flag-burning, requirements instantly arise. The first if the definition of terms.
So what is an American flag, anyway? Would the law define it as a fabric rectangle featuring thirteen alternating red and white stripes with fifty stars in nine offset rows in a dark blue field in the corner?
Great. Meet the scrubby entrepreneurs who would immediately manufacture completely burnable flags, manufactured to skirt the law by virtue of eleven stripes, or forty stars. But wait, you may say. Let’s just make it illegal to burn things that look like a flag.
That should work out just great. I’ve seen clothing items that feature just enough striping and starring that some malcontent could torch one and spark a torrent of 911 calls. The precision necessary to make flag-burning laws coherent is the very characteristic that makes flag-burning laws impossible.
So is there no recourse for those of us interested in stemming this disgusting behavior? Sure there is. Setting fire to anything in a public place would seem proscribable on a safety basis. If I were at your town’s city hall, could I set fire to a bedsheet in public?
But we all know it’s the flag imagery that makes this issue both literally and figuratively incendiary. On that point, I go back to a talk show call I took from a veteran in Memphis, where I was working at the time of the ruling. “I have a feeling I went to war to protect all kinds of things that might infuriate me,” he began. “But I wonder if this couldn’t be included under laws we have against inciting riots.”
I asked whether he thought a flag-burner could be broadly defined under law as necessarily seeking to spark violent unrest. As the issue returns to the headlines, I can still hear his reply to me: “Mark, I can’t tell you what lawyers might say about what does and does not incite a riot, but I’ll tell you this: if somebody burns a flag in front of me, I’ll start a riot right on top of his ass.”
Might not be a helpful story, but I sure enjoy telling it again.
Instead of outlawing flag burning, maybe we should amend the constitution to prohibit the prosecution of anyone who does violence to someone for burning the flag.
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Now we’re talking. When I see it, intellectualizing the situation isn’t my 1st reaction. Thank God I’ve never seen anyone do that in person. I’m not sure my usual restraint—”bite the inside of my cheek and remind myself that there are those that rely on me not being in jail”— would hold.
I can see the states lining up now to vote for ratification. You made me mad, I get to hit you. Good deal, kind of simple like pre-school.
Just not that one. It's the redneck ethnic flag.
“If one attempts to destroy the only hope of the world, how is that different from shouting “fire” in a crowded theater, other than that the timeline is years vrs seconds?”
An excellent point.
And a short history of the American Flag here:
http://www.usa-flag-site.org/history/
Interesting info on congressional action and executive orders regarding the flag.
Thank you for sharing the link to the story.
Reader’s Digest puts out some good ones every so often.
“You made me mad, I get to hit you.”
And how is that different from executing murderers? It doesn’t bring the murdered back to life. It doesn’t heal the grief of the living.
“Good deal, kind of simple like pre-school.”
Of wisdom I may have little, but I have learned that the road to wisdom leads from the simplicity of ignorance through the complexity of too much misunderstood information, then back to the uncluttered vistas of simplicity as misunderstandings are jettisoned.
The difference is excuting a murderer is because the murderer killed someone. And the flag burner just put your panties in a wad.
“The difference is excuting a murderer is because the murderer killed someone. And the flag burner just put your panties in a wad.”
You realize that’s an argument for a lesser punishment, but not for decriminalization, right?
Despite your use of a common DLDT (dishonest liberal debate tactic) it is not only I who object to flag burning. Millions of Americans share my position, and that should place this conduct in the same category with shouting “Fire.”
This conduct is so egregiously scurrilous that it is unreasonable to expect decent people to remain patient and tolerant, just as it is unreasonable to expect people in a crowded theater to remain calm when faced with the danger of burning to death.
u don’t seem tom understand it is NOT an argument for a lesser punishment. It is the distinction between harming another person and not harming a person. Burning a flag might piss you off, but it does no harm to your person or property unless the flag is stocking out of your gas tank.
You are proposing the government give license to physically attack another person even hough it is not self defense.
You can shout fire if you want and there is a fire. If you mean in a crowded theatre, it is not analogous to flag burning since in one case you are warning people to safe their lives and in the other you are just throwing a temper tantrum.
Just because you are not understanding doesn’t make me a liberal. It is a cheap desperate attempt to win an unsinkable argument. If you want to add further attack, send me to DU or one of the other sites. that’s what the real faux-bullies try to do when they lose and argument.
“u don’t seem tom understand it is NOT an argument for a lesser punishment.”
The word is spelled “you.” How young are you, anyway?
“It is the distinction between harming another person and not harming a person. Burning a flag might piss you off, but it does no harm to your person or property unless the flag is stocking out of your gas tank.”
That’s the fundamental error that leads people into libertarianism: the failure (or refusal) to think things through far enough to see the harm done.
I guess you’re probably not old enough to remember America before all this crap metastasized in the 1960s, Flag burning is one more tactic in the degradation of American culture, of the effort to turn Americans into self-hating Obama voters, and it had its effects.
It is not difficult to identify the tactics of the left, or to see their effects. Every one of these tactics is defended not just by the left, but by the tendentiously even-handed—people like you, and even some to the right of you, who are unable to make the connection between action and reaction.
“You are proposing the government give license to physically attack another person even hough it is not self defense.”
Any measure taken against the left is self-defense on a national scale. The constitution is not a suicide pact.
“If you mean in a crowded theatre, it is not analogous to flag burning since in one case you are warning people to safe their lives and in the other you are just throwing a temper tantrum.”
Nonsense. In the case of flag burning, you are attempting to prevent the destruction of the only hope of the world.
“Just because you are not understanding doesn’t make me a liberal. It is a cheap desperate attempt”
Blah, blah, blah. I didn’t say you were a liberal. I said you used a DLDT, and you did: you implied that I am the only person in the world who holds my opinion, while you speak for some “us” and “we,” which apparently includes all decent people.
Awesome ideas.....until now...until Trump gave us our voice back, we could never execute the counter-strategies that you have outlined!
Instead of trying to convert a hopeless case like me, go ahead with your amendment. I’ll follow your progress in the news.
Hmmm. I think it would be a good time to invest in a flag factory. Profits should be going through the roof.
Those of us who are conservative are proudly flying it again. The liberal morons are rushing out to buy and burn them.
A win-win for capitalism.
“Instead of trying to convert a hopeless case like me”
Even a red-diaper baby like David Horowitz finally got his head on straight. With God all things are possible.
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