Some of the protesters. I realize this is a fairly sophisticated point, but just because you see a guy or two (or three, or four) shouting “Fuck AmeriKKA” while protesting–although I’m sure the phrase is just your extrapolation of their position, since it’d be hard to vocalize the double-K there–doesn’t mean that everyone who protests shouts “Fuck AmeriKKa.” And it doesn’t mean that all of the rhetoric is anti-capitalist (Manichean much, by the way?), nor even that all the rhetoric that is anti-capitalist is necessarily pablum.
There are some reasoned and articulate critiques of the current global market regime out there. I’ve written on the topic myself; feel free to search the archives, and you’ll find that America is spelled properly throughout.
You simply can’t tar everyone who subscribes to a particular viewpoint (or some iteration of a broad range of viewpoints, such as, “I am sufficiently critical of United States policy that I will express my dissent by joining with others in protesting”) with the brush of the extremists within that cohort. Rather, you can do so, but it makes your arguments that much easier to discount.
That is a ludicrous argument. I don’t need to meet every proponent of something to abhor to think they’re not quite right. You could be Isaac bloody Newton, and I’d say that, in regard to politics, burning a flag marks one’s inability to express one’s ideas clearly.
I don’t need to meet every Marxist to know that he or she is dead wrong. I don’t need to meet every single anarchist to know that his or her political ideas are naive. And I don’t need to meet every flagburner to know that he or she is mistaken in thinking that he is preaching to anyone but the choir.
Do you genuinely believe that John Ashcroft will look at you capering around a burning flag and say, “Whillikers, my ideas of increasing security in the U.S. are deeply flawed. Thanks, Catsix for your cogent analysis of the errors in my handling of the post-9/11 security tactics.”
I repeat, I believe flagburning to be a juvenile, content-free, and deeply offensive act. You disagree? Too bad.
Ah, but you keep ignoring the point that it wasn’t a guy, or two, or three , but a whole crowd! The reasonable ones were the two, or three, or four. I was bloody there–do you think I hallucinated it?
As I have said before, which you continue to ignore, there is reasonable protest, and flagburning, in my opinion, does not qualify as “reasonable.”
No excluded middle here, I’m well aware of the range of opinions. Again, I’m saying the radicals constitute the majority of DC protestors.
Oh, nobody–certainly not I–said that the current global market regime cannot be critiqued in a rational manner, nor that everyone who protests is irrational. Crom knows there’s enough to protest in re the Bush adminstration.
See, I’m going on what I saw and heard. You’re posting from a priori assumptions. You assume that in any group that the majority must be rational and that the noisy, angry ones must be a minority . If recent global events have shown us anything, it is that that assumption is false.
So could you please stop acting like your opinion of flag burning as a means of protest is the only valid one and debate the effectiveness of such a method without calling people as ‘morons’ because they disagree with you?
You’ve got every right to disagree with my methods, but it doesn’t further discussion at all if your entire argument is ‘Only morons burn flags.’
And I’m saying–as I have been–that I’d like to see a cite for that. Given the proportional dearth of radicals (or anarchists, or hippies) among the population in general and among dissenters in particular (that is, there’s a large body of articulate dissent out there, far outstripping the loony ravings; are you saying that the reasonable thinkers don’t bother to show up at protests?), I see no reason to automatically believe that the majority of protesters (in D.C., or Seattle, or Philadelphia, or San Diego, or Quebec) were as you describe. Frankly, I don’t care if you were here; I’ve got competing anecdotal data points from people like matt_mcl which say that violent or loony protesters were very much the minority at events that they attended. Therefore, you’ll need to provide a more substantive basis for your statements that a) hippie anarchists have no better message than “Fuck AmeriKKA,” and b) such anarchists comprise the majority of those who would consider burning the flag, particularly at events of public protest.
Hmmm…wasn’t there something said around here about stereotyping and how it’s nearly always a bad form of generalization?
Item: I agree that flag-burning is a constitutionally protected form of symbolic speech.
Item: I agree that nearly always it’s an inappropriate means of making the protest intended.
Item: I agree that it is highly offensive to people for whom that flag is an emotionally charged symbol.
Item: I disagree that anyone who burns a flag is ipso facto “juvenile,” engaging in “an imbecilic method of protest,” [a] moron who deserve[s] nothing but contempt," and is using “an attention-getting tactic employed by people with more piercings than brains.” However, I can concur that many if not most protests during my lifetime that involved flag-burning were generally attended by people who might be so characterized.
With regard to the limb that gobear has placed himself on, I would suggest to him that his recent remarks have placed him in a position where, by passing an amendment prohibiting flag burning, he would be classifying himself as “a moron who deserves nothing but contempt” for employing “an attention-getting tactic employed by people with more piercings than brains.” Au contraire, in such a hypothetical situation, I would be inclined to think that Congress, not gobear, would be described by the first of these epithets, even if he did indeed carry out his stated action in such an eventuality.
Polycarp, please show any post where I said I was, in any way, in favor of banning flagburning? Hmm?
I strongly, deeply disapprove of flagburning as a form of protest. I further say that anybody who burns the flag in protest is performing a moronic act. Just because I loathe the very idea of it DOES NOT MEAN THAT I WANT TO BAN IT.
HOWEVER, if an amendment were passed, I would burn flags myself for then as I have said before, circumstances would have changed. Burning a flag is the ultimate act of protest. I would only do it under the most dire circumstances.
You people can fool yourselves that performing a perfectly legal act is somehow brave and daring, that trashing the preeminent symbol of America is just a bit of fun, that flags are just pieces of cloth.
On second thought, for you leftists, I guess the flag IS just a piece of cloth. Sad.
No, I suggested in my post not that you favored banning flagburning but that you were classifying all flagburners as despicable types (summarizing your phrases) – and that you yourself had said you would burn a flag if such an amendment passed. I’m glad to see that you’ve clarified that the passage of such an amendment would be a sufficient change in the political/rights-issues climate that you would feel it justified and would engage in it at that time.
The one thing I’d have to offer to you is that some people’s views of what constitutes a “sufficient change” may differ from yours, and, feeling much as you do, they may feel that recent events, especially if misreported, constitute “sufficient change.” (John Ashcroft did not unilaterally suspend the Bill of Rights, despite the inflammatory language of some.)
And you see before you the words of one strong Liberal for whom the flag is the symbol of something wonderful and important, and to be respected for that reason.
I merely try not to confuse symbol with referent, on this or any other issue.
Sorry, but it really does depend on the context. Watch…
Let’s say that I get completely fed up with the way John Ashcroft is dismantling the country’s civil liberties. So I get a bunch of my friends together in a public park, invite the media out to watch, then get up on a podium and make a big speech about how “We are gathered here to mourn the death of America, killed by our illegitimate president and his jackbooted warhawks by destroying our rights,” blab blab blab.
Then, to finish this mock funeral, I respectfully drape the “corpse” of the country – an American flag – on top of a stack of cordwood. I make some more fluffy words about how America was a warrior for freedom and diversity, and I will now give it a warrior’s death, via the traditional Viking funeral pyre.
Then I break out the zippo, the news cameras film the “nutso flag burner,” and everyone goes home when the riot police arrive.
Now, is there anything in the above that says “America should be destroyed”? Because keep in mind that in my abovementioned (hypothetical) rally, I’m mourning a death, not advocating one.
Context is everything. If it wasn’t, we couldn’t dispose of our old flags by burning them (as we’re supposed to do).
Rjung, stop it. That’s twice now I’ve completely agreed with one of your posts. You made the most persuasive argument in this thread about the moral utility of flagburning, certainly far more persuasive than Catsix’s diatribes.
God, I must been bitten by a liberal in my sleep, and now I’m becoming one! What next? Do I get repelled by copies the National Review and dissolve in the cathode rays of Fox News?
Yeah, actually I laid out a couple of scenarios that, other than the exact details, involved giving a speech about the burning of the flag being the symbol of the actual destruction of rights committed by the government or members of it… yet mine’s just a ‘diatribe’ and rjung is absolutely right?
What is your problem? Is it that I told you I’m a pierced person?
About, the other, I suspect it is, in fact, because rjung went to the trouble to spell out that his putative flag-burning would be staged as a reverent ceremony.
FWIW, I found your descriptions of the issues that could drive you to flag-burning to be persuasive and eloquent; at the same time, my inner protest-joiner was insisting that the act be carried out in just such a ceremony as rjung described.
