In a shocking turn of events, President Trump signed an unconstitutional executive order making burning the American flag a crime. He said it incites rioting and as per Brandenburg v. Ohio that expression that leads to "imminent lawless action* is not protected. Thing is, the Supreme Court specifically looked at that in Texas v. Johnson and said that flag burning does not meet that standard and therefore burning or desecrating the flag was protect.
I, for one as I’m sure all of you are, am appalled that the advisors would fail Our President in something so basic. I look forward to President Mr. Trump firing those that gave him this horrible advice and that he soon corrects it for rights, freedom, apple pie and bald eagles.
Trump will only eat “deep fried apple pie” from McDonalds and he hasn’t had a good relationship with white-cowled raptors since this happened to him:
As for flag burning, Trump could care less and would even join in if it would would make a good meme to sell more $TRUMP coin, but it’s a good excuse to send HNS, the National Guard, the Marines and maybe a few Park Police in to tear gas and beat demonstrators as a show of how much he’s trying to do to forestall violence in our nation’s cities.
All this means is Trump will throw people in jail for flag burning, own the libs and incite his base while the case works its slow way through the courts. That will end up at the US Supreme Court (probably). They have been exceptionally generous to Trump. Do you have faith the SCOTUS would uphold the First Amendment here?
Even if they did, the people challenging this will likely be in jail the whole time.
If you were (both) Penn & Teller, could you feel safe in this moment?
The possibility of ending up in either Schrödinger’s SuperMax facility or … Uganda … exists!
[No. In the US we do not criminalize activity retroactively, and then prosecute its retroactive offenders. Well, we didn’t in The Before Times, anyway]
The flag burning menace goes much deeper than we realize, people! The leaders of that commie organization ‘The American Legion’ need to be rounded up and imprisoned!
The American Legion passed a resolution about flag retirement ceremonies in 1937, and they’ve been an important ritual ever since. According to the resolution, “The approved method of disposing of unserviceable flags has long been that they be destroyed by burning.”
You’re attacking the headline summary, not the actual text of the executive order, which is concerned with “American Flag desecration conducted in a manner that is likely to incite imminent lawless action”, not ceremonies that respectful dispose of old flags.
Well, but my point is that flag burning is protected by the Constitution because the fact that flag burning is a long accepted way of disposing of old flags highlights the fact that it’s not about the actual act of flag burning itself, it’s about the message being sent, which is free speech.
I’m only interested in burning an American flag when someone proposes making it illegal. I suppose I need to go buy one now. Are they all made in China?
The constitutional protection of flag burning as political speech has nothing to do with flag burning as a disposal method. Similarly, the executive order we’re discussing has nothing to do with flag burning as a disposal method; it is concerned entirely with flag burning as political speech. There are plenty of arguments for why the order is baseless, illegal, unconstitutional, ineffective, etc., but the fact that people can (still) legally dispose of flags by burning is not one of them.
Serious question, though about burning flags I’ve always wondered:
Sure, burning the flag is protected speech, but in most public spaces you aren’t allowed to burn anything. If I went downtown and burned the North Korean flag, or a copy of the local paper, or bults a camp fire on Main St, surely there’s something they could hit me with, right?
So why isn’t that the way to go after flag burners
(this is not to say I don’t support this as a 1A right, just pointing out that there is a REAL offense in play)
I think the idea is that banning all flag-burning qua protest assuming it will result in imminent lawless action was unconstitutional. Certainly if other laws are broken that is not protected. I cannot protest by burning an American flag in a 55 gallon drum in my town because burn-barrels are illegal and there might be a fire-ban in place. Similarly if I burn an American flag with the intention of getting a whole bunch of MAGAs to kick my ass, that might run afoul of the incitement laws and therefore is not protected.
So instead of dangerous burning, what if the offender uses it to pick up dog poo?
And yes, the EO uses the old term “fighting words,” which are used as a defense for those who reacted to provocation, not as a prior restraint against words or actions. So what if the offensive act is done among people at a demonstration, and nobody present is offended?
The EO users the words “sacred,” and “desecrate” (I stopped counting at six), as a justification. What exactly is the legal definition of “sacred” in a secular society? Motherhood is sacred too. Should Ma Barker receive a posthumous pardon?
