One represents and entity,
One represents dead people.
How is this a logical comparison?
I’m sorry, Mr Moto, but the difference is, the Vietnam Memorial is public property. IF it were on my property, I’d be free to spit on it all I wanted.
Likewise, I’m not going to go out and burn the flag that flew at the Battle of New Orleans, because THAT would be vandalism and destruction of a valuable artifact. But if I buy a flag, a SYMBOL, and want to burn it to prove a point, I have every right.
It’s called a demonstration.
Before we continue, Mr. Moto, are you under the misapprehension that flagburning receives an exemption from normal laws against burning things in public places? If you’re under that misapprehension, the sooner you let us know the sooner we can set you straight.
If, however, you’re arguing that laws that single out the burning of flags for prohibition but allow the burning of relevantly similar objects, then you need to explain why this is not a speech-based prohibition (with the SC’s rightly broad interpretation of “speech”).
Daniel
What I want to know is, when I see a MCGuzzler driving by with a faded, tattered, shredded-up flag flying (which obviously has not been taken down each night as per flag protocol), can I run in the owner of said vehicle for desecrating our flag?
How is desecrating our flag by fire different from desecrating it by neglect? Both are outside the traditional protocol for handling the U.S. flag with respect.
(I hope this is not a hijack. I don’t think it is, though)
In the above, I should have mentioned that I am speaking of actual flags flown from cars, not stickers or back-window appliques that may represent the flag.
First, I don’t support the right to deface public property. But if someone built her own copy of the Vietnam Memorial in her front yard and spit on it every morning…
Well, that’s her right - and I support her right to do so.
I also support your right to call her names while she’s doing it.
Similarly, I don’t support someone stealing a flag from a public building and torching it.
But if the same person wants to buy her own flags and burn them as part of her spitting-on-the-personal-memorial ceremony, again, I support her right to do that.
And again, you should be absolutely protected in calling her foul, obscene names while she’s doing it.
Protecting free speech means protecting stupid, callous, hurtful, disrespectful, horribly offensive speech. Otherwise, “free speech” is worthless.
Just out of curiousity, why don’t you consider spitting (and flag burning for that matter) to be speech, if you consider it expressive?
Plenty of American veterans wish to retain the right to desecrate the flag. Hell, many of them believe that that’s exactly what they fight for.
Since we’re discussing actual rights, and not what I think is or is not in good taste, if spitting on a park bench next to the Vietnam Memorial is legal, then spitting on the Memorial itself should be legal. Similarly, if burning my t-shirt in the street is legal, then buring my American flag in the street should be legal. If there are laws preventing spitting on the park bench or burning the t-shirt, then the other activities can fall under these laws.
Nope, not on the publicly displayed one, but not due to any first amendment issues. Yes, if you made a copy for yourself and put it in a place where spitting is legal, such as your own property.
I want to go on record here as being fully supportive of all bodily excretory functions.
Bo
[QUOTE=Snowboarder Bo]
I want to go on record here as being fully supportive of all bodily excretory functions.
Oops.
That said, I also believe that there is a time and a place for most of them, and it is only with serious effort that I can find a time when the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial might be the appropriate place for any of them.
I will decline the opportunity, but I will steadfastly defend the right of others to spit.
Heck, it’s in the Constitution… the first amendment guarantees that we have freedom of spit, doesn’t it?
Bo
Interesting that you understand exactly what someone means when they burn a flag vs when they spit on a monument.
I have a different opinion about flag burning. The flag is a symbol of America and the purpose of destroying the symbol of America is to express the hope that America itself will likewise be destroyed. A country isn’t just made of buildings and monuments and laws and real estate and political policies, it is made of people. I don’t know how you can wish for the destruction of America and not wish for the destruction of the people of America. So generally I believe that someone burning an American flag is hoping that I die by flame, my family dies by flame, and every other American citizen dies by flame.
I don’t see any particular reason to believe that your interpretation of what a flag-burner means to express is more valid than my interpretation. To the extent that explicit speech advocating the painful death of millions of people is protected speech, so too should flagburning be protected speech. I don’t support laws against flag-burning, but to pretend that flag-burners aren’t hoping and praying your death and my death and the death of your family and friends is pretty naive.
You don’t see the problem with that post?
Well, now that’s a little silly. America may be nothing more than the sum of its citizens, but its citizens are far, far more than simply “Americans.” I could wish for the destruction of America as a political entity because I wish it to be replaced with a better, fairer, more just political entity. Such a revolution does not require the genocide of everyone on the continent. If you were to read that, during the Civil War, secessionists burned copies of Old Glory, would you assume this indicated a desire to sweep North and slaughter every single man, woman, and child, or would you recognize that destroying the American flag is, most often, an expression of intense dissatisfaction with the political structure that flag symbolizes?
I hear what you are saying.
I have an old friend whose name is on that wall. I can’t remember a time in my life when I didn’t know him. We did not agree about the war. He was a West Point graduate; I was opposed to the war. But I’ve never doubted that he gave his life to make men free – even when it means that they are free to be asshats sometimes.
If someone took a rubbing of his name from the wall and spit on it, stomped on it and burned it, of course I would be offended. I would try to tell them what a great guy Bill was. I would tell them about his big laugh and his grace on a basketball court and his personal courage. But if they didn’t want to listen, that wouldn’t change anything about who Bill was. His honor stands no matter what. And the right to protest and disagree and even disrespect remains, so far.
Pax
Let me go wayyyyy out on my whacko leftist limb, then, and suggest that if you encounter ambiguous speech, and one interpretation is just offensive, and the other interpretation indicates murderous intent, you should, I dunno, ASK FOR CLARIFICATION?
Geez Louise. And they say we leftists are impractical.
Daniel
The flag-burning that went on in the Sixties and early Seventies was to protest what the government was doing in our name. It’s because we loved our country that we were protesting. Why would we want to kill or own countrymen, our own families and friends? Did you know anyone personally who burned a flag? They were burning a symbol not the country!
Leftists, as a whole, wanted to STOP the killing.
[QUOTE=Soylent Gene]
Bad Anology. Spitting on a one-of-a-kind public monument is nothing like burning something that you own and has 10s of millions of copies (a flag). Besides that, the scenario is purely hypothetical. Why on earth would someone do that? What would be the statement? Has this ever happened?/QUOTE]
I suppose that someone who grew up in North Vietnam and watched his family get roasted by a napalm attack might want to hack up a loogie on the Vietnam memorial. Hypothetically speaking, of course.
I have wondered the same thing.
The utter clueless nature of the desecration amazes me.
Or to believe that flagburners want you dead could be seen as paranoid and delusional.
YSMV*
*Your sanity may vary.
Once again-there is only one National Vietnam Memorial. It is public property. To go up to it and spit on it, or whatever is basically vandalism. It’s also disgusting and unsanitary. Quite honestly, if people feel that they would like to spit on veterans, or would like to say, “The people honored by this memorial were butchers and babykillers”, well, I don’t agree, but they have a right to say it. They do NOT have a right to desecrate something that DOES NOT BELONG TO THEM.
Now, for this analogy to work, it would be like me going up to the flag that flew during the Battle of New Orleans (the one that inspired Francis Scott Key) and setting THAT on fire. THAT wouldn’t be protest, or speech, it would be destruction of an historical artifact, vandalism, not to mention arson, since I think it’s in the Smithsonian. I’d be arrested and rightly so.
Now, if someone were to build replicas of the Vietnam Memorial to spit on, I’d have no problem with that. Likewise, taking a flag I bought at Walmart for a buck fifty and setting it ablaze should not be a crime. It’s MY flag, I bought it, I can do whatever I want with it.
If it’s a flag flying in front of the court house? No, because it’s not mine.