quote:Pix: think of it like being in a situation where you love someone so much you have to let him or her go.
Funny, for me that analogy would be more accurate if he didn't burn the flag. But then my "love" is more towards democracy than freedom.
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quote:If you HAVE to, you're not free to choose not to.
Precisely. I resent their assumption that my freedom to choose not to burn the flag needs to be constrained.
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Tom: Then I encourage (but not require, obviously) you to choose NOT to burn the flag despite their goading.
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Hmm...When I think of my love for "America" (as a concept) it is more due to the forms and methods of government than the definition and delineation of basic human freedoms. Do I love "Freedom" more than "America?" Probably. Maybe not. I hope I never have to find out.
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posted
I agree with Tom, though I would like to extend that logic to gay marriage. I think if they vote to ban it, Tom and myself should get hitched. Wouldn't want to be a hypocrite or anything.
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quote:Then I encourage (but not require, obviously) you to choose NOT to burn the flag despite their goading.
What meaning could the flag as a symbol possibly have for you once they make burning it illegal -- even unconstitutional?
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posted
I think the flag would still have meaning as a symbol. Not burning it, however, would cease to have meaning for me.
Also, they are not goading people to burn it, they are trying to violate what the flag stands for by banning the burning of it. Burning it (if such an attempt gains sufficient traction) in a dignified manner to protest such a ban is, in my opinion, extremely respectful.
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posted
I think the most disgusting way to disrespect the american flag is to pass a law making it illegal to burn it.
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quote:What meaning could the flag as a symbol possibly have for you once they make burning it illegal -- even unconstitutional?
The flag doesn't stand for just one thing - what you're essentially saying is the flag only stands for the freedom to burn it, and once that freedom is gone, then the flag is worthless to you. I don't see it that way. To me the flag can represent many things and it does represent many things to me. One of the most important thing it does in my mind is fly in honor of those that gave up their lives to protect this country. I could never burn the flag or stand by calmly while it's burning (except in retirement ceremonies where it's entirely appropriate to burn it within the ceremony), so if you ever choose to exercise that right please don't do it in front or me, or at least give me enough warning so I can walk away - far away.
Pixiest speaks for me in this thread - I don't want an amendment making it illegal to burn it but I certainly wish with all my heart no one would ever choose to burn it, regardless of what happens.
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posted
Should we also outlaw the burning of effigies and foreign flags, or is it only specific symbols that should be protected by law? If burning a flag is against the law, would hanging it upside down or desecrating it in some other manner also be illegal?
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posted
I have to admit that I will have little patience for the people who try to dodge the law by burning imitation flags, desecrating the flag in a technically legal way, etc. -- except insofar as they will serve as demonstration cases of the ridiculousness of an amendment.
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quote:except insofar as they will serve as demonstration cases of the ridiculousness of an amendment.
That's a big thing to demonstrate. Sloppy law-writing is an abomination and far more threatening to civil liberties in the long run than this amendment by itself.
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No, I'm serious. If we're going to outlaw the burning of an American flag, shouldn't we also protect other symbols? I've seen effigies of the President and the flags of our allies both being burned in protest, and have seen American flags being ground into the mud and trampled on by people. Where would these activities fit into a flag-burning amendment?
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quote:Originally posted by Boothby171: Apparently, the Republicans are only going to allow the American flag to be burned when it's wrapped around married homosexuals.
quote:If burning a flag is against the law, would hanging it upside down or desecrating it in some other manner also be illegal?
I was always under the impression that an upside down flag was a sign of distress. I think many people feel like we, as a country, are in trouble. In that sense, flying a flag upside down would be accurate.
Also, I'm with Tom too. It wouldn't be an enjoyable experience, but a necessary one.
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posted
Flying the flag upside down, since it is a sign of emergency or distress, could probably be illegal just like yelling "fire" can be.
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posted
Hadn't thought of that. Do you think if you hung a flag upside down outside of your house people would think you were being attacked by land pirates? Or that your house was sinking?
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posted
To me, disrespecting the symbol of something is a much lesser offense than spitting on what that symbol stands for.
But, honestly, many of the people who have been wrapping themselves in the flag for their own pet causes have been desecrating it for years.
Even in this case, where they are using this as a political trick to distract people away from their poor performance, reeks of disrepect for the flag.
I think the proper reponse, for both sides of the issue, is to remove the flag from its place as a political game piece by demanding that this be moved to after the elections.
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quote:No, I'm serious. If we're going to outlaw the burning of an American flag, shouldn't we also protect other symbols? I've seen effigies of the President and the flags of our allies both being burned in protest, and have seen American flags being ground into the mud and trampled on by people. Where would these activities fit into a flag-burning amendment?
Yes, but who are you asking these questions? There's not a single supporter of the amendment here.
quote:To me, disrespecting the symbol of something is a much lesser offense than spitting on what that symbol stands for.
I agree, but based on a very high calculation of the offense involved in the latter, not a low calculation of the offense involved in the former.
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quote:Originally posted by Dagonee: Yes, but who are you asking these questions? There's not a single supporter of the amendment here.
You know, I think you are right. Leave it to Hatrackers to find something to argue about, even when we all agree.
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posted
"Pixiest speaks for me" -- Belle, June 6th, 2006 "Count me on the The Pixiest bandwagon" -- Dagonee, June 6th, 2006
Looks like I got me a new Sakeriver .sig!
In seriousness, though, Belle and Dag, you have no idea how many times I didn't have to respond to a thread because you guys said what I wanted to say only better. Without profanity.
I agree with Pixie and most of the rest. The whole issue is a non-issue. Any protestor who protests by burning the flag is losing his moral high ground and most of those he wishes to have as followers. Pity them, ignore them, praise even louder those virtues that flag stand for, and those martyrs who's lives have been spent so it can wave, but don't outlaw their protest.
How else can we find the stupid and egobound protestors out there who only want 20 seconds of media coverage?
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posted
MPH touched on this point a little on the first page, but I think it's worth specifically mentioning the federal flag code:
quote: 'The flag, when it is in such condition that it is no longer a fitting emblem shown for display, should be destroyed in a dignified way, preferably by burning.' 36 U.S.C. 176(k).
Not that anyone seems to be arguing in favor of the amendment so far, of course. This is just what I think of any time banning flag-burning is brought up.
posted
People who want to see a constitutional amendment passed to protect a piece of cloth are, and shall remain, total and absolute ninnies.
I love and respect the American flag because it represents a foundation of freedoms against things like silly ninny-ass rules that would disallow me from burning the American Flag should I so choose to express myself that way.
Ninnnnnniessssssssss
Maybe it would be fun to see how people toy with an anti flag-burning law. I could make major bank by manufacturing "Not quite" American flags, which look almost exactly identical to the American flag but are not quite an official flag (say, one of the stars is missing an arm) and thus are still perfectly legal to burn despite the presence of a terribly retarded amendment passed by ninnies. I could get them spread out so that whenever someone does burn a flag, you might as well not bother to try to arrest or prosecute them because you can't prove that they weren't burning a Sam's Burn-Legal Almost-An-American-Flag™
Nobody steal my idea k
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posted
I think the debate hinges in part on what the flag means to you personally.
Is it a symbol that represents the entire history of America, separate from the current actions of America? Are they one in the same?
If they are, it's not really fair. While I respect everything that's happened in the last two hundred years and change of American history, and while I'd be the first to defend that history, I also think that the flag stands for America's actions in the now. But there aren't two flags, one for the past, one for the present. Well, technically there are, the current flag is only what, fifty years old? So technically unless you're burning the 13 star Old Glory I guess you aren't really defiling the time it was sewed in.
But that's semantics. American flags were burned the world over when we invaded Iraq. French flags, albeit not a ton, were burned around the US when they said they would not only NOT help us, they'd vocally oppose us at every turn. Kind of a funny country that thinks we shouldn't burn the flag of a nation that invades non-immimently threatening nations, but burns the flags of those that questions such an act.
To bridge threads, if the Federal Marriage Amendment were passed and ratified into the Constitution, I would consider both the burning of the copied Constitutions and flags to be an acceptable form of protest. Why? Because by doing so you are expressing that you feel America has turned away from it's roots in the strongest fashion possible. You're protesting in a way that is so far beyond words, there are none necessary. The passing of that act would spit on every past achievement made in the field of civil rights, and burning the flag in that case obviously doesn't mean that you don't respect the past, it means you respect it so much, that you hate what America has become.
If you follow that the flag currently stands for what America currently stands for, then it's perfectly acceptable, and also a powerful tool to be used most sparingly, but acceptable.
Whenever I have seen the flag burned in America, it isn't being done because the people who burn it have no respect for the country, it's being done because they feel that the meaning of the flag is being changed by people making poor decisions that betray America's history.
(Question: If you had a flame proof/retardant flag and lit it on fire using some sort of alcohol, thus setting it aflame, but not actually burning it to ashes, does that count? Would it satisfy the symbolism of the act without harming the icon?)
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posted
Uh oh. Good point. The flag burning amendment better specify that the consumption of flammable material on fireproof flags is also unconstitutional. We don't want to be skirting the rules, here! We want that sucker sanctified.
Which means, of course, anti flag-urinating-upon precautions as well.
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posted
This whole flag burning amendment is a conspiracy against the American-flag makers in China. Once people stop the rampant flag burning that's going on, we'll have so many that we won't want any more and China's economy will collapse.
I forsaw it first!
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quote:Originally posted by The Pixiest: I'm against a flag burning amendment... but god.. I couldn't burn a flag... not even to protest the law. I can't even tell you guys to knock yourselves out and have fun.
Regardless of what the flag means to you guys, to me it means more than just America. It means freedom in general. And I can't burn that.
Pix
I disagree. The Constitution is what makes this country what it is, not the flag. And yet, I don't see anyone demonstrating to ban burning Constitutions -- probably because the paper is worthless, and the ideals printed on it can't be destroyed.
Flags no more represent me than eagles or tall white men with strange beards do. If you start worshipping them in place of freedom, you've already abandoned the entire point of this country.
That said, I think burning a flag is idiotic -- but legal, provided it's performed safely. Fundamentalists burn Harry Potter, but they're not capable of destroying the story. I can't imagine that anyone watching an arsonist burn a church believes he's burning God. The same goes for any destruction of any literature or symbolism.
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Ah, but Launchy, don't you see? That would just make the world hate us more. Because we caused the collapse of a nation (and one that deserves it, IMHO) indirectly, France would say we did it on purpose and then proceed to be little whiners because they aren't a world power any more.
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quote:I disagree. The Constitution is what makes this country what it is, not the flag. And yet, I don't see anyone demonstrating to ban burning Constitutions -- probably because the paper is worthless, and the ideals printed on it can't be destroyed.
Flags no more represent me than eagles or tall white men with strange beards do. If you start worshipping them in place of freedom, you've already abandoned the entire point of this country.
That said, I think burning a flag is idiotic -- but legal, provided it's performed safely. Fundamentalists burn Harry Potter, but they're not capable of destroying the story. I can't imagine that anyone watching an arsonist burn a church believes he's burning God. The same goes for any destruction of any literature or symbolism.
I especially like what you said there in bold. A professor of mine in college often wondered aloud at the reverence with which Americans treat their flag, almost as if the cloth itself were some sort of holy relic. I admit, after some of his comparisons, flag worship started to weird me out a little bit too.
However, I think perhaps your comparisons at the end there aren't valid. Arsonists burn churches out of hate, or because they are punk vandals with nothing else to do. Fundamentalists burn Harry Potter because they feel threatened and lash out like an animal does when backed into a corner, some sort of biblical fight or flight thing.
Were I to burn a flag, and I would if I felt the situation warranted it, it would be because I felt an American liberty, or an American ideal was being trampled on. It would have to be a dramatically gross violation to get me to go that far, but I would. No one who burns the flag actually thinks they are physically getting closer to their goal because they burned the flags, otherwise they'd go out and burn someone ELSE'S flag, instead of buying their own.
I outlined earlier in this thread what I felt was the problem with the issue of flag burning. To some, the flag represents an idea and a history, and to some, especially around the world, the flag is more present, more immediate. It represents what America is about NOW, and what it stands for NOW. Anti-flag burners I think tend to fall into the historian category, while the pro-burners fall into the presentist category. I think it's both, personally, but it's a difficult distinction. If my country decides to grossly violate its own history, and its own customs, rights, liberties and freedoms for whatever reason, then that flag now represents a gross violation of those freedoms, there isn't some new flag to stand for Americans new direction, it's all fluid, under a single flag.
200 years ago the American flag stood for slave traders, NOT for freedom. It stood, in many ways and for many people, for the last 200 years, for slavery, for racism, for religious oppression and a whole host of other bad things. But ironically we ignore all the stuff in between 1776 and 1940, and then between 1945 and whatever other wars we fought in the name of freedom.
The flag doesn't just stand for military victories in the name of freedom, it stands for all the crap that we got wrong, and then tried to fix. It also stands for all the crap we are CURRENTLY doing wrong, and for all the crap we WILL do wrong. In that sense, the flag stands for a million things, and one thing, America, and everything that goes along with it.
So when, and if, I burn the flag, what exactly am I spitting on or offending? Where is this odd belief that the flag has ALWAYS stood for freedom for ALL, and justice for ALL, and equality for ALL. If you're looking for that, then this amendment should be, as Lalo said, to protect the Constitution. The flag represents what we ARE, the Constitution represents what we want to be, what we STRIVE to be.
And in that sense I have no trouble at all rationalizing the burning of the flag. It stands for the protest of the desecration of the Constitution, as a protest for leading the nation down another dark path, like so many that we've gone done before and have had to trudge out of slowly, and painfully. It is the loudest and most silent form of protest against the government. I think, that people who blanket all flag burners as idiotic, just aren't taking the time to find out WHY that person is burning the flag, and what the flag means to them.
quote:Ah, but Launchy, don't you see? That would just make the world hate us more. Because we caused the collapse of a nation (and one that deserves it, IMHO) indirectly, France would say we did it on purpose and then proceed to be little whiners because they aren't a world power any more.
Interesting point of view. In some senses, France hasn't been a world power since the 20's. In other senses, they are easily in the current top 10 of world economic and military powers. The world shifts and changes, and power is no longer the same thing it used to be, when a projection of force was the best estimator of the 'world power' status of a nation. Just because they don't see things our way all the time, doesn't mean they are the enemy, it means they have minds of their own, and won't kowtow to American hegemony. In that way, they are almost a world power unto themselves.
Still, at the end of the day, they have our backs when we're pushed against a wall, and we have theirs. That hasn't changed since the Revolutionary War.
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quote:If you start worshipping them in place of freedom
You've set it up as a false either-or situation here. The Pixiest opposes the amendment. She's made no compromises with freedom.
For that matter, calling it "worshiping" because someone doesn't want it burnt is inaccurate as well.
Even the people in this thread who have said they would burn a flag in response to the amendment admit they're doing something they don't like.
quote:The Constitution is what makes this country what it is, not the flag.
Your mistake here is thinking that people oppose flag burning because they think the flag is what the country is. Although I'm sure there are those who think that way, most I've talked to don't.
posted
You know, I've said before that I would burn the US flag if it were made illegal. I think of doing so, though, and it makes me upset. It is something I'd want to do, but I'm not sure I could bring myself to do it.
It seems to me that an amendmant to burn the US flag is...well, I hesitate to use such a strong word, but I will anyway. It's idiotic. The US flag is a symbol. Symbols are tangible things that represent other tangible things, or other intangible things. They are not the thing represented itself, no more than if I were to burn someone in effigy I would be burning that person in reality.
A huge portion of why the symbol of America is so precious to me is because it was the first national goverment which expressly permitted outright public dissent against itself, private as well. So long as you did not advocate violence, according to the Constitution, you may express any opinion reviling or criticizing our government you choose, in any venue (so long as that venue does not belong to someone else).
Burning the US flag is, to many people, an expression of deep loathing and incredible disrespect and contempt. Thus in my opinion it is only seperate from protected speech in its degree of criticism, not the nature of that criticism. And so bannin it is idiotic.
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posted
One of my thoughts has always been that the countries where burning the national flag is against the law are countries where civil rights are few and far between.
I tried doing a Google search, but didn't come up with much. Apparently, flag burning is illegal in China, Cuba, Iran, Iraq before the war, North Korea and Haiti. How exactly is it patriotic to ban flag burning considering the list of countries it would put us on?
It's illegal in Finland and New Zealand too, so I guess we would have some decent countries to talk to at the "we-banned-flag-burning" dinner parties.
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posted
Personally I'm not generally a fan of basing our laws on the company they would put us in. I feel that should be, if at all, very far down on a list of factors to consider what our laws will be.
The real question is, what company of motivations does it put us in? And whatever the company of nations, the company of motivations is rarely so specific.
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quote: A huge portion of why the symbol of America is so precious to me is because it was the first national goverment which expressly permitted outright public dissent against itself, private as well. So long as you did not advocate violence, according to the Constitution, you may express any opinion reviling or criticizing our government you choose, in any venue (so long as that venue does not belong to someone else).
Exactly. The proposed amendment, in trying to protect the symbol, attacks the ideal that the symbol represents. I think in part this is because, for some people the image has become more important than the reality. We concentrate more on how we feel about America than on what is really going on with America. I can empathize with this feeling. I am unreasonably envious of people who can still have uncomplicated feelings about America. I think it is especially difficult for people who remember WWII to even consider that we might not always be right. I watched my father go through this - painfully. I am extraordinarily proud of him. It was not easy.
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posted
Now, if someone would propose a ban on flags on car radio antennas, window decals, gas stations and used car lots, I might be willing to sign up for that
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Even though we agree on this issue, kmbboots, I have to wonder if you really are envious of people who have uncomplicated feelings about America.
I only wonder because it is the kind of thing I have said before, only to later realize...that frankly, I'm not envious. More pitying, really.
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posted
Three years ago, at a local Independence Day festival, a group of disabled adults were performing their act. It consisted mostly of singing along with recordings and doing some synchronized dance movements. Their last number was Lee Greenwood's "Proud to Be an American." I was wreaked. I sobbed (audibly)so hard that my chest hurt. Those performers were so proud. I ached to be able to feel that way again.
I know that it is my duty to examine my country, to pay attention to what is going on, but sometimes it sucks to be a grown up.
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posted
Hmmm. I definitely do not have uncomplicated feelings about my nation, or what it means to be her citizen. Or at least, I don't think I do:) But that song still chokes me up, even on an everday hearing (that isn't to say that I listen to it daily or even often, but if I just hear it on the radio or something).
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