Flag Burning

It's been discussed HERE.

I can think of 100 things congress should be working on that is more important than this.

I thought the only way to dispose of a flag was by burning it.

While I think burning a flag in protest is idiotic, I don't think it should be illegal. If the flag is an emblem of anything, it is of our rights as Americans and one of those rights is free speech.

I remember an exhibit I saw once at a museum where the flag was laid on the floor and people had to walk across it to write in a book about what the flag meant to them. The exhibit nearly sparked riots because some felt that it was desecration of the flag. Most of the comments written in the book said that free speech was the essence of America. A lot of these comments were from veterans.

And I agree with them.

Take away what the flag really stands for and it becomes a piece of fancy fabric.

I would not support that amendment for the same reason as indicated above.

I will let James Warner, who was a POW in Hanoi during the war in Viet Nam speak to this issue. Click on the link to the video of his remarks.

He spoke during the Senate debates on the flag burning amendment in 1990 that while a POW the Vietnamese showed him the photo of somebody burning the flag and said, "See? You're wrong." And he said, "No, that makes me right, because that shows that in our country, you're free, and that's the meaning of freedom." And the captor got absolutely outraged, purple, and he'll never forget having used that as a way of showing what America stands for."

http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=10107

Warner has the word brother.

TF

I get so tired of this issue getting hauled out every time the polititians run out of ideas. What a bunch of idiots we have elected.

It's our own fault.

If this actually becomes the law of the land, I will immediately purchase a full size US Flag, put a notice in the paper of my intent and then douse it with gasoline and burn it in the middle of the street in front of my house. Should any police arrive I will then demand to be arrested.

Its sponsored by the Representative currently raising eyebrows for selling his house at a huge profit to someone that then got a lucrative government contract. Coleman? I think that's the right name.

There's some speculation that thisis an effort to show what a great, patriotic guy he is so we don't focus on the hundreds of thousands of dollars he made on his over valued house in exchange for a favor.

I can see it now: Mass burn-ins, similar to the draft card burnings of the Vietnam era.

I intend to go into business selling extremely combustible US flags with 47 stars to people who intend to burn them. That should make things interesting for the courts.

About your "throw another Koran on the fire" thread, I wonder, what would give off more heat: a pound of Korans or a pound of US flags, the number of stars being irrelevant?

Damn...good....question.....

Personally, I don't think "things" should be treated sacredly.

Burn flags if you will. Korans. But, don't forget the crosses. <currently illegal> I'm sure you are all equally disgusted at the ban of cross burning. Shall we go out and light some up?

Well, how the hell else could I kindle a fire in my fireplace if I can't burn a god-damned cross in there?


Oh, you mean burn a cross on someone else's yard, without their permission and all.

Well, that would be pretty f*cking rude, now, wouldn't it.

Not in anyone else's yard. That WOULD be rude.

Just burn one the same place you'd like to burn your flags...

...in protest of the fact it has been made illegal...

...as if we are going to let them tell us what we can and can't burn....


...right?

As Reagan said, "Now, there you go again." You know somethin', Ronnie would be negative towards the neo-cons (or, as I like to refer to them, the neo-clods). He was unfriendly with Bush I and it's concerned me that the President who was defeated by Bill and the same Bill Clinton are so buddy-buddy. I shouldn't be -- it is typical American phony politics that Gore Vidal warns us about again and again -- read "United States," the collected essays of Vidal and learn something. Otherwise, accept your fate to relive the past.


If there is something we learn from history is that we don't learn from history.

No lighthearted quips about Joe's combustible crosses...?

No dys torching a cross in his front yard...?

Edgar's not envisioning mass cross burn-ins....?

flags and crosses...inanimate objects...may hurt some people...but to hell with them....let's burn flags and crosses...are we having fun yet?