Trump Says Flag Burners Should Lose Citizenship or Spend a Year in Jail (senator, constitution)
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The country is not the flag. A flag is a thing. If you burn one flag, you can get another. Democracy, the government, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, voting rights - these are the types of things that make our country unique. Not the flag.
However, the MESSAGE being sent when the Flag is burned or desecrated is abhorrent and offensive to many. And that's the issue. Not the Flag. It's what the person doing the burning is SAYING when he burns the Flag that is being objected to.
Should someone be imprisoned if they burn the flag in private? Or is it just the public spectacle that is the crime?
We don't need a right to Free Speech for things we like and agree with. We ONLY need that protection for things we DON'T like or agree with. We don't need that protection for things that the majority of citizens agree with. These protections are to protect the minority from the majority. This is the test of our nation's freedoms and liberties.
We respect the Flag because it represents our country, the land of the free. Ironically, that freedom includes the ability to abuse that flag in political protest.
Quote:
While flag desecration -- like virulent ethnic and religious epithets, vulgar repudiations of the draft, and scurrilous caricatures -- is deeply offensive to many, the Government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.
---The United States Supreme Court, J. Brennan, United States vs. Eichman
I think it is more offensive to refer to the First Lady as an ape with heels, or for a person in a powerful position seeking political office to speak of grabbing women's private parts as a perk of fame and money, or to call ordinary citizens vile names. Should people who say those things spend a year in prison? Most people find such things offensive to the values of our country, and with regard to the First Lady, directly offensive to the office of the Presidency...a symbol of our country.
All this is political gamesmanship. It's more important to discuss what they're going to try to do with Social Security and Medicare. How much welfare is going to be given to the 1%? Don't be distracted by these grandstands that go nowhere and are intended to divert attention from the real show.
Just because he tweets it doesn't mean it will happen. However.... I do often think those who think this is such a awful country should go live in another one for a year. I lived in Germany for a spell, it was amazing some of the rules they had that curtailed freedoms that we just for granted over here.
He's been a fake news source since he threw his hat into the ring.
Um.. this was Hildog's idea back in 2005 so...... just FYI
If that was the intent, then it was a bad idea then, too.
But it seems that there's more to that story than you're letting on:
The law would have prohibited burning or otherwise destroying and damaging the US flagwith the primary purpose of intimidation or inciting immediate violence or for the act of terrorism. It called for a punishment of no more than one year in prison and a fine of no more than $100,000; unless that flag was property of the United States Government, in which case the penalty would be a fine of not more than $250,000, not more than two years in prison, or both
I think I got it. Based on our new president's own words, it's alright to go up to a strange woman and grab her by the *****. It's no big deal. By the same token, burn the American flag in legal protest, you will go to jail and lose your citizenship.
All I ask of flag burners is that they wrap themselves in it first before lighting it on fire.
Think they care what you want?
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