Guys, seriously the argument that “Congress is doing something stupid, thus taking time away from doing something to fix X problem” is one of the dumbest arguments around. Congressmen have absolute control over what initiatives they support, what bills they propose, how they choose to spend their time. If they had serious interest in “doing something” about any of the multitude of problems doomsayers on this forum talk about, they’d be doing it. And in fact, many of them probably are. Of course, they could also support this flag burning amendment in conjunction with doing that because, guess what the congress actually can be working on many pieces of legislation simultaneously.
I honestly could not care less what someone does with a $10 flag they bought from Wal-Mart. But, burning things in “protest” is the behavior of barbarians and to me is about as reasonable a form of political protest as throwing bricks at the White House or the U.S. Capitol.
This thread does make me wonder though, if I was walking say, in Richmond and a police officer was right there and I burned my shirt on the sidewalk I’m almost positive I’d be arrested for something. I honestly didn’t think one could just burn stuff on the street, anyways.
That’s the point. It’s not so much an argument against flag burning as it is a complaint against congress not solving [insert your pet issue here]. That they use thier time on silly issues like this just throws their inaction on important issues in greater relief.
Burning your own flag is as reasonable as destroying gov’t property? In anycase, there’s a pretty long history of “burning stuff==protesting”, American colonists burned effigies of King George III, and I’m sure it goes further back then that. I guess you may not find it reasonable, but the fact is it’s the method people have chosen to express their views in the past and will presumably continue to do so in the future. The constitution doesn’t only protect the speech that uses the pre-approved methods.
Sure, and you could have called it incoherent too. But it’s political speech all the same. The Constitution is quite absolute about protecting it.
Lessee, there’s littering, disorderly conduct, creating a public nuisance, possibly arson, probably other charges not related to what it is you’re burning.
bagkitty, out of curiosity, who the hell did you see burning the *Canadian * flag? Quebec separatists?
I have only seen them do it on television. The ones I witnessed first hand were Mohawk from Kahnawake. Something about a traditional graveyard being more important than expanding a golf course. I thought they made a totally valid point.
Going back to the OP, I think indecency laws probably piss me off a bit more. If something is really SO terrible that you CANNOT listen to it, then don’t. I don’t think it’s too hard to block shows and channels nowadays, so your kids won’t be exposed to it either. If something really is THAT indecent, the TV station or producers or whoever will get plenty of mail about it, and possibly apologize or remove the show or whatever. If I may direct you to a song on this topic I quite enjoy:
Throwing bricks damages other peoples property. Burning your own flag does not. Besides that, the First Amendment doesn’t limit free speech to just the tastefull speech that we like. Free Speech means tolerating speech that we hate.
You usually can’t. In fact, cities are perfectly free to prosecute flag burners under a general public burning law. They just can’t single out the American Flag as something that can’t be burned, because when they do that they are targeting the speech and not the burning.
I saw one burned and another sliced up. It was circa 1969, and an anarchist friend of mine came over to my house and asked me to go get my camera. I took a picture of him sitting on his motorcycle. He had made slits in a small US flag, and he was wearing it as sort of a ventilated beanie. He held up another, larger flag and lit it with a Zippo. When the flames began to get close to his hand, he dropped the flag. He poured beer on the flag to put out the fire.
Both flags were stolen. The big one had belonged to somebody on the next block who had a big flagpole, and who persisted in flying this tattered flag. That pissed off my friend, so he stole the flag and cut down the halyard. You could almost say that he was properly disposing of a damaged flag, except that he burned it as an act of disrespect for our government.
In those days, I was angry with our government, too, but I never burned a flag.
I saw one burned (along with an effigy of Bush) during a protest in San Francisco before the Iraq war started. It was at least lit (and I presume the effigy made) by a group of Cubans (to all appearances). As it was dying out, a couple firemen showed up, and stamped on it, to the cheers of some of the crowd.
I forgot to clarify that the flag burning I witnessed was previous to the Supreme Court ruling that flag burning was allowable political speech, and protected by the 1st Amendment. I’m not sure, but I don’t think Indiana was one of the states that had anti-flag-burning laws. It was petty theft to steal the flags, of course, but the burning was probably legal.