Rjung, your protest would be useless and counterproductive. It would be a meaningless form of communication, since what you THOUGHT you were communicating would be overshadowed by what the vast majority of the public would understand that communication to be.
If I take out a picture of the Pope and rip it into shreds, what does that mean? It means that the Pope should be ripped to shreds.
The flag is not the symbol of the government of America, it is the symbol of America. If you burn the flag in an attempt to protest the actions of the Government, you are burning the wrong symbol. People will despise you, because you are doing something hurtful. Would you wear a Nazi uniform, give a Nazi Salute, fly the Nazi flag and give readings of Mein Kampf to protest the actions of Israel? Why not? After all, you could give a speech explaining that just as the Nazis did such and such, these people did such and such, and therefore such and such. You could. Except you wouldn’t, because only a asshole would do such a thing. It wouldn’t matter what your motivations were, what you thought you were doing. At the end of the day, you are strutting around in a Nazi uniform, glorifying Nazism. Or maybe you want to make the political point that drugs are destroying America’s cities, so you dress up in a Klan outfit and burn a cross and then make a speech that drugdealers are destroying us, just like the Klan tried to destroy us. How many people do you think will listen, will respond positively to your little bit of political theater?
The Flag is a symbol of America. You cannot burn a flag to make a political point without destroying that symbol of America. No matter what your intent, the end result is that you have told people that the America should be destroyed, just as the Flag was destroyed.
If you are trying to make a political point, you will have failed, because at the end of the day you are just another flag-burning birkenstock-wearing evian-drinking, etc, burning the American Flag. No speech you give will change that, just like nobody is going to stop to listen to your critique of Israeli defense policy when you strut around in a Nazi uniform. Nobody is going to listen to your proposals for solving inner-city drug problems when you strut around in a Klan robe.
Political theater can make a point. You could attend the Gore-Bush debates in an Abraham Lincoln costume to illustrate how degraded political “debates” have become since Lincoln-Douglas. You can dress up as a sea turtle to protest habitat degradation. But some forms of political theater are vicious and hateful and despicable. No one will listen to a man in a Nazi uniform, no one will listen to a man in a Klan hood, and no one will listen to a man burning the American flag. You have the right to do any of these things, but anyone who actual does them is an idiot.