I’m Not The Only One

For those of you who are U.S. citizens, I hope you joined myself and scores of others in placing an American flag on display in their windows or doors.

As a libertarian, I do not agree with, but I do respect the wishes of those Americans who choose to not salute the flag, recite the Pledge of Allegiance, or display it in their home. I even respect the wishes of those who choose to burn it as a sign of disrespect or hatred for my country.

When I saw news coverage back in 2003 of demonstrators protesting the war in Iraq, the cameras caught some footage of white people chanting (in American accents) against Bush and the war and setting a flag on fire with a lighter. Despite my respect for the American flag, seeing it burned only made me grin. Why, do you ask?The answer is irony, sheer irony that makes me laugh. I’m glad that I live in a country where you can freely speak out against the government and even desecrate its national symbols like the flag. The communist countries many of these young protesters probably admire would imprison, if not execute, anyone in their country for even speaking out against the government. Burning the Cuban flag in Havana? Castro would probably order for you to be burned to death right next to it.

Burning the American flag is correctly identified as freedom of expression, a freedom guaranteed to all U.S. citizens under the U.S. Constitution. Perhaps if the American-born idiots who burned that American flag sat back and considered the fact that the United States is one of the few countries on the planet that allow its citizens to so vulgarly desecrate its national flag, those fools might think twice about burning the flag in the first place.

In the past some freedom-hating politicians have tried to amend the Constitution to make flag burning illegal. Thankfully, enough members of Congress has the decency and common sense to veto this measure. This law would have been especially stupid considering that most burning and/or desecration of the U.S. flag occurs outside of U.S. soil.

But I didn’t understand how idiotic a Constitutional ban against flag burning actually was until I noticed yesterday that my own American flag (which is actually older than myself) had become a bit tattered and probably should be replaced by a new one. I wasn’t certain as how to properly dispose of a worn American flag except that the VFW usually offers such services. So I Googled “flag disposal” and discovered that American flags are disposed of by burning them.

So in honor of the United States and its tradition of freedom of expression, even against itself, I offer every American the option to virtually burn the American Flag.

I know it’s too late, but as you display your flag on the Fourth and on other national holidays, take a minute to think about why you do so. And if you don’t display the flag, or don’t even own an American flag, ask yourself why not.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 8th, 2007 at 11:54 pm and is filed under Civil Rights, Government Interference. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.