I see that The Usual Suspects are going apeshit because POTUS has made burning the American flag illegal.
I know that there are all sorts of Constitutional issues involved, and I actually don’t mind too much if some malcontent decides to take a Zippo to Old Glory.
It makes Target Identification all the easier, you see.
Yeah I know: “Ooooh Kim, that’s so hateful and threatening.” Tell it to your fucking psychiatrist, or sell your angst to someone who actually cares.
If it happened the way I’d really want it to happen, I’d want the asshole to set himself on fire along with the flag and burn to death, slowly and painfully.
I was at an incident with flag burning at Nixon’s first inaugural, 20 Jan 1969. My MP company was designated “Reaction Co.” and were armed to the teeth, with M-14’s, a couple sniper rifles, M-60’s, ammo, bayonets, gas masks and LOTS of CS gas. We figured we’d get to spend the day in the armory, nice and warm, doing nothing, reading, napping and playing cards, while the other MP companies were out on traffic duty, freezing their asses off on some god-forsaken lonely street corner in their helmet liners and white gloves.
Suddenly, our CO ran through the room, yelling “Delta, saddle up, we got a problem!”
Off we went, jeeps’ sirens wailing, fell out on 12th St., double-timed north up to Pennsylvania Ave, turned right and double-timed east along Pennsylvania Ave, while crowds in the bleachers lining the avenue were cheering and yelling “get ’em, get the commie bastards”, etc. We got to a point where there was a lot of noise and commotion, and we found the 82nd Airborne was trying to keep a mob in back of the restraining ropes which were stretched all along the sidewalks. They were working with just linked arms, in their class A’s, with no weapons. We stepped in between them and said we got this, and the mob got quiet.
So there we were, in a stalemate, a bunch of us MP’s confronting a mob of hippie scragglies behind a barrier rope in front of, I think, the FBI building, when the DC Police Tactical Squad showed up and took up position in the gaps in our line and about a half step back of us. They were big guys with riot helmets, steel-toed boots, tight black coveralls and riot batons, a cross between a baseball bat and a night stick.
Just in front of me and a little right, two guys popped out of the crowd, one with an American flag on a staff and the other flicking a raised cigarette lighter. Before I could react, very quickly but in slow motion in my mind’s eye, this big cop in black shouldered by me, snatched lighter boy by his grubby field jacket lapels and heaved him toward the street. His hips hit the rope, his legs whipped over his back, and he sailed by me and landed in a heap on the asphalt just behind me. Another big cop caught him on the first bounce and drop-kicked him about 25 feet into a paddy wagon. As the first guy was flying by, the cop turned to flag boy who was recoiling back in fear, snatched him by the jacket and belt and tossed him by me. I picked up the fallen flag as he went sailing by. Flag boy was likewise bounced into the paddy wagon. The whole thing took maybe ten-fifteen seconds from the flag burner wannabes’ appearance until the paddy wagon door shut and they were gone. The mob got very quiet and I gave the flag to the sergeant in charge of the Tactical Squad. I wonder if he still has it.
WoW! That sounds like a scene out of a movie I never seen. lol
I’ve always held a sort of disconnect on this flag burning business. On one hand the flag represents something bigger than itself, but on the other hand it is someone’s personal property to do with as they see fit.
Now that I’m concentrating on it, maybe if the flag owner burns the flag (his property) on his own land no harm done, but if he burns it on “public” property harm is done.
Don’t lose sight of the fact that the appropriate way to dispose of a damaged or soiled flag is to burn it. Like eating unleavened bread, very much depends on the associated ceremony.
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My VFW Post does a flag retirement ceremony every Flag Day. We used to burn them at the post, but now have a deal with one of the local funeral homes to take the retired flags we collect throughout the year to them for processing in their crematory after we hold our ceremony.
Starting fires should never be a valid form of protest.
If you look closely at the EO, it basically says that the Feds are going to enforce all applicable laws on flag burners (arson, trespassing, stealing property, setting fire in a public space, etc.) with no passes because it was “political speech”
And, it states that the Feds will refer appropriate cases to local authorities to prosecute under local laws, i.e. had the hot potato to blue cities and states and let them squirm as to who they are going to piss off most, the Panty-Fa and AWFLs if the prosecute, or their rapidly declining base of normal people if they don’t.
And, it appears to make such activity an automatic review of Visa holders for possible deportation (won’t that make the Ivy Terrorist Support groups happy).
So, there may not be any actual Constitutional issue here. But IANL and who knows what stupidity Judges will come up with next.
I think in general the flag-burners are cowards. They wanna impress me how tough they are do it at Sturgis during bike week. See how committed you are then.
But getting the Feddies involved in this is an invitation to ongoing problems. Shit like this could be used to call a Koran defacement, a federal violation.
In general its better off if the .gov sticks to securing the borders, and nothing else.
“I’d want the asshole to set himself on fire along with the flag and burn to death, slowly and painfully.”
The solution is to make helping them do exactly this totally legal.
I’ve said “beating the shit out of them” elsewhere, but I like your idea better.