what, nobody noticed the Senate actually voted in favor of free speech and common sense?

[acroyear]

Well, 1 vote over 1/3rd did, anyways.

The other 1 vote less than 2/3rds disgusts me right now, but at least they've been shamed for a few months longer...

Comments

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

The right to be disrespectful is a fundemental right, and a necessary one. Had we not been willing to be disrespectiful, we wouldn't have done wonderful things like getting arrested (and hung) for burning King George III in effigy, etc etc.

I don't care who the fuck doesn't like it. A fucking piece of cloth is not worth destroying the rights our founders fought the revolution for in the first place.

The right to live in this country comes with it the responsibility to suffer the slings and arrows (in words and deeds, provided you're not physically threatened or injured) of those who either don't give a damn, or give too much of one. If you can't take the idea of someone being disrepectful, YOU move to Iran or China, the only two countries in the world that have anti-desecration clauses in their constitutions.

Did we really want to join that crowd, which also in the past included Nazi Germany?

[thewhitedragon.livejournal.com]

The right to be disrespectful >is< a fundamental right - you're brook no arguments from me over that. I'm all about free speech. The right to be offended (or think something is disrespectful) is not constitutionally protected. The truest patriots are often those who oppose the current government because they are doing something offensive to the populace.

I'm completely against turning this into an amendment, make no mistake in assuming that. I was, however, taught that the flag is the symbol of our freedom... a physical representation of our country. I was taught to respect that symbol because without the freedoms we have we would be no better than people in Iran or China where the government oppresses it's citizens.

I think of the flag in relation to freedom like Catholics think of the cross as a symbol of their religion. Even if I don't agree with the policy each represents, those symbols are deserving of my respect.

So you see my "dilemma"? Burning a cross (in a non-racist aspect) is offensive to me. Burning a flag is offensive to me. I personally could do neither desecration, but I would never make it unconstitutional for others to do them if it was done in peaceful protest.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

and I was taught that symbols are just that: symbols. They are symbolic of the real thing but never mistake it for the real thing.

this is the reason, at the heart of it, that the 10 Commandments banned idolatry - the people (as the golden calf showed) were too easily swayed to worshipping the thing they could see rather than the God they couldn't. the puritans were seeing the same thing happen in the Catholic-derived Anglican church: the emphasis on gold, perfumes, crosses everywhere - it was all "out there" so that nobody needed to look within where Jesus told us to look (many modern evangelical churches, particularly Jehova's Witnesses have this same problem - its as if Luke 19 never existed).

Patriotism should never be enforced by law, but that is precisely what this amendment would have done.

and finally, even the term "desecration" implies a sense of the "Sacred" and in itself is a gross violation of the establishment clause: it creates a grounds for worship of the state.

remember that other country that once had a flag-burning clause in its constitution? :)

[thewhitedragon.livejournal.com]

enough. enough. enough.

I said I find it disrespectful. My opinion. Laws are not based solely on my opinion. I want the freedom to be able to burn flags kept however, I find it distastful.