If we can tell people that it's obscene to show pictures of children having sex (and it is), why can't we say it's obscene to burn the flag that is the symbol of this shining city on a hill, a flag for which many brave men and women have died? If it hurts women's feelings to hear sex jokes at the office and if that's illegal, doesn't it also hurt patriots' feelings to see the flag burned? I don't get it. Why is protecting the flag less of a priority than banning song lyrics or dirty jokes or pornography?
Aahhh, but hurting a patriot's feelings is never, ever a consideration, is it? In fact, sometimes it looks like that's the raison d'être of say, the Gray Old Lady.
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Yes - maybe we should amend the constituion to ban sex jokes at work. What are we - fucking talebans ?
No need to amend the Constitution for that -- it's already the law in most states. Just look it up.
>>The flag is sacred.
this is bordering on idolatry. i don't know what swayt baby jayzuss would think of this, but I say 20 lashes.
It was sacred to the Marines who planted the flag on Iwo Jima.
And a word from Hitch:
Thus, for a Fourth of July message, I would suggest less masochism, more confidence on the American street, and less nervous reliance on paper majorities discovered by paper organizations.
Amen to that.
yup - nothing like the good ol'ostrich approach.
I hope they weren't dying for the flag, but fighting to preserve the ideas behind it.
Men have used symbols since time immemorial. For example, the cross is a symbol, the flag is another one. Putting the cross in a bowl of piss, or maliciously burning the flag of course is at attack on the ideas underlying those symbols. What is the proper (and commensurate) response to such attacks can be the suject of reasoned discourse, But pretending such acts are meaningless is simply adopting the ostrich approach.
On the other hand, ignoring the yapping of the Euro intellectualls is ot putting one's head in the sand; rather, as Hitch says, it's a perfectly valid defense mechanism for maintaining one's sanity when everyone around is losing his head.
ai, if someone puts a flag in a bowl of piss, yes, they are offending patriots, and that's especially sad when it's done in front of a speechless front line medic of WWII. The flag in the piss simultaneously demonstrates a grand display of their (the "artist's") own ignorance -- why would I want to deprive someone of making themselves look like an idiot?
If they (the "artists") tried to put my flag (either my own, or one that was purchased with some of my or your tax dollars) in a bowl of piss, well, then we obviously got a real problem.
Symbolism was used since time immemorial, you're right. Pedophilia was also accepted in Socratic times. Pedophilia, today, is totally wrong. Pedophilia, yesterday, was totally wrong too. I don't think we should run the analogy that flags and humans are to be treated identical. Humans (so long as they aren't preparing jihad) are more important than cloth.
Flag-burning is wrong, I'll agree with you on that ai. Without question, I'll legislate to protect children, and willingly beat the shit out of anyone who would attempt to violate them (I think we're all in accord on that matter). But I'll continue to assert that it's necessary to settle the flag-burning issue in the public forum rather than with legislation.
Yes - although the big picture here is that this is entirely a fabricated problem: in the total absence of flag-burning incidents, there is no need to bring up this issue, let alone to legislate it. The only places where that i've seen people burning the flag were in muslim countries over which the US doesn't yet have total jusrisdiction.
I submit that this is entirely divisive pre-electoral posturing and that we'd be smarter to ignore this non-issue.
the French will never understand:
"It's a little strange, this obsession of the flag," French author Bernard-Henri Levy wrote after traveling across the country. "Everywhere, in every form, flapping in the wind or on stickers, an epidemic of flags that has spread throughout the city," Levy wrote in "American Vertigo" of the riot of banners he saw.
Oh well.
... and BHL is the most pro-american author/"philosopher" we have...
To commemorate our little blog discussion, I purchased four 4" X 6" American flags today.
Good for you, MFT. Tell you the truth, despite my heartfelt patriotism, I'm too cheap to buy a flag, but good to hear someone is putting his money where his mouth is, unlike me!
If BHL is the most pro-American Frenchman there is, I shudder to think what all those baguette-carrying snail-eaters really think of us.
Actually, in another day and age that was not quite the case. I still remember growing up reading the likes of Jean-Francois Revel or Raymond Aron, and learning at their knee about the greatness of America. O tempora, o mores...
>>growing up reading the likes of Jean-Francois Revel or Raymond Aron, and learning at their knee about the greatness of America
same geographic location but it was a different america back then...
"It's a little strange, this obsession of the flag," French author Bernard-Henri Levy wrote after traveling across the country. "Everywhere, in every form, flapping in the wind or on stickers, an epidemic of flags that has spread throughout the city," Levy wrote in "American Vertigo" of the riot of banners he saw.
This is the first time I concur with BHL - i've lived here for 16 years and still can't get over the idolatry over the flag. Not to mention it has a nickname... can a nation get cornier than that ?
Doesn't the French flag also have a nickname -- le Tricolore? How soon they forget...
le tricolore is purely descriptive: it isn't a term of endearment.
The French Embassy seems to make a bigger deal about the tricolor:
Un seul symbole visuel est officiellement consacré par son inscription dans la Constitution, c'est le drapeau tricolore, bleu, blanc, rouge, dans cet ordre, à partir de la hampe. Inventé en 1789, lié à la France révolutionnaire puis impériale, il a été violemment rejeté et remplacé par un drapeau blanc de 1814 à 1830. C'est la révolution de 1830, dite de Juillet, qui l'a définitivement ramené et reconsacré. La droite royaliste et catholique intransigeante a peu à peu transféré sa dévotion du drapeau blanc aux trois couleurs. Cependant que l'extrême gauche révolutionnaire qui, vers la fin du XIXe siècle, vouait un culte subversif au drapeau rouge s'est à son tour ralliée au tricolore (période du Front populaire puis de la Deuxième Guerre mondiale). Aujourd'hui le drapeau tricolore est unanimement reconnu comme signe de la France.
Note that the Left wanted at some point to replace the tricolore by the Red Flag. Betcha most of the Lefties still pine after that (with perhaps the hammer and sickle in there?)
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