06/24/05

Every few years in recent memory, Congress gets together and passes a Constitutional amendment to outlaw flag desecration. The Senate ritually rejects it. Who knows how the state legislatures would vote if asked. I've burned an American flag. I helped retire one in an official ceremony at Boy Scout camp. When a flag is old and tired, this is the proper method of disposing of it. It is not considered unpatriotic, I suppose because those who solemnly retire the flag are not doing it because they hate America. Do protestors, the very, very few among them who burn the American flag, hate America? Is that why they do it? Who knows? I don't believe in hate crime legislation, and certainly not when the 'victim' is a piece of cloth. That the protected victim status would go to 'America' -- an abstraction with no readily stipulated definition -- only complicates the matter further...

http://www.lewrockwell.com/gregory/gregory81.html

from LewRockwell.Com, by Anthony Gregory


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp