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Originally Posted by Sailor Steve
Yes, the American flag is the symbol of everything America (and Americans) stands for. Unfortunately, the main thing America stands for is freedom. Individual liberty. Freedom to criticize and condemn, if that's the way you feel.
In order to protect the symbol of that freedom, are you willing to outlaw the freedom itself?
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That's not all there is to it. Sailor Steve, what is a flag, considered in its material constitution? A bunch of fabric sewn together. You can't have a one-threaded flag, you need alot of threads arranged together to make a flag.
The freedom to burn a flag is only one thread of the issue. If you're free to burn a flag, what are you complaining about? It's not about flags then. So the other threads are the people who are burning it and why they are doing it, and chances are they're connected to a bunch of other people through other threads, such as the thread of the common goal. They don't seek to criticize or condemn. They seek rupture. These are those that deny the right of opposition, those that seek to eliminate freedom because they believe to be the vanguard of history. They use the freedom you grant them to, once in power, deny you this same freedom. They need to break free from you, because their freedom ends where yours begin. In this case, flag burning is a mere distraction to drive your focus away from them and from their goals to matters of elementary freedom. And you defend their right to burn a flag while they carry on calling for the death of a President, praising Jihad, ripping the constitution apart and claiming that opposition to them is illegitimate, thus creating confront and upheaval. Hardly people who value freedom, especially anybody else's.
The point Steve, is that you can burn a flag. But they can't. Because you recognize their right to exist, to live and to speak and you don't seek to eliminate or silence anybody. But they don't recognize yours. Personally, I'm against any law that outlaws flag-burning because that would only help them accomplish their goals, further driving the focus away from the important points to the irrelevance of the right to burn a flag.