I don’t have much more to add besides the thread title. I just don’t get why people would want to burn flags or why others would care that they do. That is, what exactly is the reason that people burn flags? To draw the ire of the people who don’t like flag burning? So long as it’s done carefully to not endanger anything else, why do people hate it? I guess maybe if the first question were answered satisfactorily, I might have an answer to the second, but neither of these things makes one bit of sense to me. It just looks like a stupid pointless act that’s symbolic of … something … that I guess other people don’t like the fact that people are allowed to make acts symbolic of that? If it’s a political statement, what are the burners trying to convince people of, and why don’t those opposed to it accept it as free speech?
And how do flag manufacturers feel about it?
I guess the fact that I don’t really care if people burn flags puts me in the camp of people who are on the side of the burners, but I honestly don’t understand their intentions either, and I wonder if I knew the reason behind people burning flags I might be opposed to it as well.
It starts with the difference between a “sign” and a “symbol.” These are the definitions I learned in school: A sign points to something or conveys information about something (like a stop sign or a sign on a store that says “open for business”). A symbol points to something and also participates in the identity of the thing it is pointing to (like a crucifix–cross with Jesus’s body on it that Catholics favor-- or a picture of your mother, or a wedding ring, or a flag).
A flag is not just the sign identifying the nationality of, say, a ship. It also is part of the identity of a nation. It’s not just a sign; it’s a symbol.
So when people burn a flag, they’re making a statement about the nation, and not a positive statement either. They’re rebelling, protesting, objecting to something that the country or its government is doing. And they’re emphasizing it by a disrespectful act.
Another example. [I’m just making this up.] Let’s say you have a terrible argument with your wife. She pulls off her wedding ring, throws it on the ground and stomps on it. That ring is not just a piece of jewelry; it’s a symbol of your marriage. I’m guessing it would hurt a lot if she did that.
Back in the 60s when women burned their bras–the bras weren’t just underwear, they were a symbol of women being treated like second class citizens. Burning them was meant to say that.
Or some young men burned their draft cards during the VietNam war. You can be sure that did not protect them from being drafted, but it was their way of protesting the war.
Destroying symbols or treating them with disrespect is meant to make a statement about how the person feels about the thing that the object is a symbol of.
In this era of environmental consciousness, it’s surprising that setting fire to things, releasing pollutants and greenhouse gases is considered acceptable behavior.
Go ahead and burn stuff* to show your political consciousness. Just be prepared to pay a fine for violating open burning laws.
I think that’s a good summary. But (and this is something I learned in an earlier thread myself), there weren’t any documented bra burning events in the 60s. It was talked about, but there isn’t any evidence anyone actually did it.
As for why it upsets people… well, there are people who have great respect for the US, and the flag is a symbol of the US. To take TL’s analogy of the marriage a bit further, if your spouse threw his/her wedding ring in the garbage, wouldn’t that upset you (assuming you still wanted to stay married)?
While I’m generally skeptical of Grand Theories That Attempt To Explain Everything, I think it’s worth reading up on Jonathan Haidt’s Moral Foundations Theory. Basically, conservatives and liberals think about morality in really different ways. When liberals are trying to decide whether something is morally OK, they really only care about whether it hurts anybody, violates someone’s freedom, or gives one person or group an unfair advantage over someone else. Flag-burning does none of these things, so most liberals are kind of “meh” about it, except insofar as it enrages conservatives … which it does, because conservatives consider a whole additional range of concepts when they’re trying to decide whether something is moral: loyalty, authority, sanctity. Flag-burning, arguably, flouts all three of these values, which explains why some people find it particularly infuriating.
I can understand the demonstration to one’s spouse of defiling the symbol of marriage. The target audience is clear, and the message very direct. But flag burning is completely different. Who exactly is the target audience? What is the message being sent? What is the expected outcome? I know the answers for the wedding ring, but not for flag burning. Burning draft cards at least lets me know exactly what it is that you’re not happy with. But a flag? Why a flag? How does that even begin to send a remotely coherent message to anyone?
Or is it just “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it any more” and it doesn’t actually make one lick of sense?
I was just informed through other channels that burning is the traditional way to dispose of a flag. So I guess those wanting to make flag burning illegal really just want to make disposing of a flag illegal. They apparently believe there can be no legal reason why someone would get rid of a flag permanently.
I’m also wondering how such people would respond to those burning flags for fuel because they’re cold, or about making a decision in a fire that’s out of control to save something other than a flag. But that’s sorta tangential to whole “what exactly are people trying to accomplish by protesting with flag-burning, and why is it that others don’t like it?”
The message sent depends on context. In the 60’s, it was usually an anti-Viet Nam war message, and it ran something like this: “I hate what my country is doing in Viet Nam so much that I hereby desecrate its symbol.” This is different from respectful disposal. Flag-burning as protest is usually done in a disrespectful way, with the flag touching the ground and possibly being stepped on too.
The target audience is everyone who is not already on board with your point of view. It is a drastic measure designed to both draw a lot of attention and to express the depth of your anguish about your country’s behavior. Those who get angry about it may or may not agree with your general point, but (as ThelmaLou explained so well) in their view nothing a country could do is so bad that its own citizens should burn its flag.
There is also the phenomenon of your country’s foreign enemies burning your flag. That is an expression of contempt, usually done to egg on angry crowds and promote a warlike atmosphere, which is useful to that country’s leaders. I seem to recall this happening during the 1979 Iranian revolution, at various times in Cuba’s history, and so on.
I’m not sure just what it is about the concept of “the flag being a symbol of the nation” that you’re not understanding.
There’s an old story that may possibly help you understand. Due to technical issues, I can’t copy this, but here’s a link. The story starts about a third of the way down the page.
It’s like burning someone in effigy, burning a flag. And for some reason I thought this flag-burning thing had been settled, by the Supremes, some years ago. It’s a form of speech, therefore not punishable by the government. It’s a really extreme form of criticism of the government; but we are allowed to criticize the government.
Leaffan, there were episodes of flag-burning and disrespect in the run-up to the 1995 sovereignty referendum in Quebec. The one I particularly remember was a bunch of yahoos wiping their feet on the Quebec flag in Brockville (I think that was the location). There were counter -demonstrations in Quebec with disrespect of the maple leaf.
It made the national news and did not contribute to reasoned discourse, to put it mildly.
Say you hear folks chanting “Hell, NO, We Won’t GO! Hell, NO, We Won’t GO!”
Do you stand around, utterly mystified, wondering just who exactly constitutes that ‘we’ and where the heck it is that such people refuse to go to?
Say a guy with a megaphone starts leading that crowd in some call-and-response: “What do we want?” “JUSTICE!” “When do we want it?” “NOW!” Do you turn to me to complain that it doesn’t begin to send a coherent message? I mean, you don’t know whether they want a cop prosecuted for shooting an unarmed man, or whether they want a prisoner released, or whether they want something else entirely; you only know they’re in favor of “justice” – and who isn’t, amirite?
(I heard people chanting “Lock Her Up” at Trump rallies; would that have prompted you to reply, “I say, good fellow; to whom does ‘her’ refer? The sentence itself lacks the relevant details; kindly supply a spot of useful information, eh, wot?”)
Sell more flags? I would assume they’d be on board with that.
A nearby mall has been floundering (like many malls). A year or two ago a Flag Store opened (actually flags, banners, poles, halyards, etc). The store closed two months later and is now an Eyebrow Threading place (whatever exactly that might be).
And they laid off their staff.
If it’s your flag, go ahead and burn it, wipe your ass with it, put it on your mantle and prostrate yourself before it, whatever you want to do. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to criminalize the destruction of one’s own property (unless Smokey Bear finds you doing it in the forest).
Sure, but another Supreme Court could overturn that, or a Constitutional amendment could remove the free-speech protection for flag burning. Our Presidential-Elect seems to think…or at least pretends to think, which is probably more accurate…that this is a Big Fucking Deal and has made tweety noises about changing things.
This seems to fall into the same realm as OMG VOTER FRAUD, a problem which really doesn’t exist. Even if you think that flag-burning is not just morally wrong, but should be legally wrong, it’s not like there’s a plague of such incidents.
I was a women’s studies student 1985-1988 and one of my professors, Rosalyn Baxandall, was a participant in the Miss America protests that the “bra burning” story came from. Here’s what she said happened:
• They had a “freedom trash can” set up outside the protest in Atlantic City, into which women were to throw girdles and brassieres and corsets and whatnot, and the original plan was indeed to set them on fire.
• Someone involved in the demonstration’s leadership made the determination that it was not going to be a good idea to light them on fire. The people issuing the demonstration permit didn’t want a fire, there were ecologically-minded participants pointing out that burning nylon and latex just wasn’t a good thing, etc
• Reporters who wrote up the story relied on advance publicity in part and wrote the stories without realizing that no actual fires were involved, so the stories of “bra burners” went to press
The problem with this research is that different people hold different things sacrosanct. For instance conservatives get upset about flag burning or desecration of religious iconography, whereas liberals would get upset about burning a book or desecration of images of liberal heroes. Thus when the original study was done they only asked about things conservatives hold sacred and miss that liberals use sanctity as well. Haidt, the original researcher now tells a much more nuanced version of how moral foundations are made.
Whether, by design or dumb luck, Trump played the flag burning issue like a maestro. He tweets about an something that has been an issue since a court case almost thirty years ago. His opponents then attempt to upset him by burning flags. This defines his opponents as flag burners and people who hate America and him as someone who is standing up for his country against those people. Most politicians would give their left nut to have their opponents burn flags on tv and he did it with one tweet.
