Quote Originally Posted by gagged_Louise View Post
Flag burning strikes me as an American issue. I've never heard of anyone going to jail or even being fined, in the last forty years, for burning an Irish, Swedish, German or Italian flag - provided it was their own flag! People around might get irritated or angry or say "that was immature", but nowadays it's not seen as a sacrilege against the nation per se, no matter what the point of it was, and a step past the limits of civilized free expression. Legally it's a non-issue.

It's a political act, not a means of voting yourself out into the wilderness and asking to be taken to jail. This ultra-dramatic view of flag burning is something you stick to in America, a reflection of the prairie frontier mentality maybe?
The real research shows this is a non-issue. There's a vocal minority that very much wants flag-burning to be illegal and a disinterested majority that the media takes advantage of to make it a bigger issue than it is.

What I mean by this is that there are relatively few people who take flag-burning that seriously, but they're extremely vocal about it and get a lot of press because they make good television. The press then has a poll to which lots of people answer about flag burning in much the same way as they would "sure, there should be a law that the drive-thru can't screw up your order". In every poll that has asked respondents to rank flag-burning on some sort of scale, it typically falls at the bottom of most people's concerns.

An anti-flag-burning amendment plays well for the Republicans because a) supporting it solidifies the base, and b) it's not going to actually come to a vote and wouldn't pass even if it did -- so it's a perennial issue to mobilize those interested in it.

But the media portrayal of this and other issues results in a perception that we have a "prairie, frontier mentality", I guess. Though I'm really not sure why that's a bad thing, since I'd take that mentality to mean self-reliance and perseverance -- something a lot of Americans (and the "civilized" world in general) are losing to their detriment.

My personal view on flag burning is that it's stupid the way it's typically done because it's done with rage and anger and that turns people off. Even the people who don't really care aren't going to take a raging flag-burner seriously, therefore he's not going to convince anyone to his point of view -- and if he's not trying to convince people, then he's simply engaged in political masturbation and is, frankly, a little sad.

The flag is a symbol of the country. For me, burning it in protest means that the country has changed -- that the symbol no longer means what it once did. That should be an act of sorrow, not rage.

If a flag-burning amendment ever does pass, I'll likely be arrested; because I'll be sitting on the Capital steps with a stack of flags and a brazier, mourning the passing of the Constitution I so dearly love.

Part of the distaste for it, though, probably comes from images of those in other countries burning the American flag. There's an association then between that and someone burning it here, so since those people hate us, then the American flag-burner must hate us as well -- and if so, why doesn't he just get the fuck out? If it's done with an "America-sucks" theme and not an "America's better than this" theme, then that's my opinion too -- because too often I've seen the American flag burnt at protests of something that is fundamentally American.