Texas v. Johnson - The 1st Amendment Right to Burn the American Flag: Something You May Not Have Known [148]

From where I stand, JSC, you appear to be totally missing the point. But if Josak were one type of Protestant in England in the 1600s and spoke freely about his religion, other Protestants, who controlled the state would most likely have removed his head from his body. The first group of Protestants finally got tired of that and more or less founded America (where, of course they started doing exactly the same thing to other Protestants they didn't agree with as well as Catholics; although they did swap out guioteen for a hangman's noose instead.)

Yes, I do agree with you that the symbolism of American's burning the American flag is just as you say, hateful; it is telling the world that the flagburners believe America is a piece of crap and no better than Iraq at its worse and has absolutely no redeeming value at all. Besides hurting me a great deal, as it was designed to do, it tells me these people are leftist simpletons who have no more grasp on reality then those who are as far Right as they are far Left.

What I also know is that as much as I disagree with their ruling it is, nevertheless, the law of the land and if the President sent me, as part of the Arrmy to defend their right to burn the flag, I would go without protest.

Also, Josak, consider this. In your first comment you say "I think it [flag burning] should be legal simply because we should extend maximum freedoms to all citizens so long s the actions do not harm others"

Besides the point I have already made about physical vs. emotional harm, I offer this regarding making such an overly generalized statement.

Let me start by making an assumption and say that you find the actions of the mortgage lenders during the recent housing bubble crisis leading up to the 2008 recession despicable and, for the most part illegal (fraudulant) and should have been prohibited from happening in the first place.

Those who supported those activities, mainly on the political right, say they broke no laws, it was buyer beware; those poor suckers who were making no income should have known they couldn't have afforded those million dollar homes.

Broadly interpreting your opening statement, those on the right are correct, while not political speech, it is speech nevertheless, and so long as the speech by the lender wasn't purposeful lying then it can be argued it is technically not illegal and covered by free speech and they can continue to convince these poor dupes into buying something they can't afford to their hearts content because the government has no right to make their speech illegal.

I am not sure you can use after the fact results to proscribe before the fact actions that may be marginablly different. I don't know, maybe you can, it is something to think about.

Do you agree, I don't.

I understand your reply Josak and in 99% on instances agree, including Larry Flint, but I counter with this: it can be argued, I think, that to see the American flag or the other two founding documents burned or in any other way destroyed, even images of them, causes emotional harm to a whole nation, just like yelling fire in an otherwise safe but crowded theater can cause physical harm, in a way that "no other action", not speech, can.

In my mind, that is what separates that specific action from all others and deserves special consideration. Supreme Courts have used this type of reasoning in the past, including the "fire in the theater case" (Schenck v. United States in 1919.), or a semblance of it anyway. In this case that wouldn't have worked because Texas only protected the flag and not the other two documents. Even I might have defeated it on those narrow grounds but supported it on the much broader grounds.

Also consider that one liberal justice must have voted No to this 5-4 decision for Scalia to be the deciding Yea vote.

Anyway, thanks for helping me put some reasoning behind my gut.

Thank you all for your comments. To answer JS, nope, I never have. And to all of those who support the 5-4 decision, I have nothing of substance to offer in rebuttal because your arguments are usually the ones I make.

But, in the case of the American flag and our founding documents, I have a very personal emotional tie and, to me, burning those things is no different than burning down America itself and, therefore, me along with it. There is absolutely no logic involved to my reaction, just gut emotion on this one.

To me, there needs to be an emotional line somewhere and while I know it is not the same, burning the flag or the Declaration of Independence or the U.S. Constitution is the same as yelling FIRE in a crowded movie theater, don't you see.