Maybe if you weren't such simple-minded fool you'd realize that getting to stand around the flight-line in another country and watch coffins with your fellow brothers and sisters get loaded on to the plane home and your last real impression of them is the American flag, or maybe try going to someone's funeral where you watch the entire time that person's wife or mother is holding it together as best as they can until they are handed the folded flag and they lose it.
Try putting yourself in the shoes of that same mother as they get to watch some loud-mouthed liberal retard burn the flag because because they think $15 an hour is a good wage for unskilled burger flipping.
I'm not advocating making flag burning illegal. I'm advocating doing it for the right reasons, in a reasonable, respectable manor. Just because it's "just a flag" to you doesn't invalidate that other people will hold the flag in a certain amount of reverence.
Like I said earlier, your freedom to burn the flag can also get you attacked. The law of the country which protects your freedom, also gives a reasonable defense to any person you incite with your disrespectful show of patriotism.
infracted - minor flaming
Last edited by Crissi; 2016-12-01 at 08:45 PM.
The flag represents the values of the nation. It's more than the cloth it was sewn out of.
It represents the nation, its culture, its history, its hardships and its glories.
Criticize and scrutinize the government, that's fair. That's the right of the people to free speech. Shit on the nation's values by burning their flag and you should be put under scrutiny.
A government can be replaced given enough scrutiny by the people. A nation can be.. replaced too? The point being that the integrity of the nation state will crumble if it doesn't have the support of the people. Have enough people undermining the nation state by burning its flag and you will have opportunistic revolutionaries tear up the nation or melt it into a pseudo-superstate, jeopardizing its people.
Yes, I am presenting a slippery slope argument. That was how the Arab Spring started, after all.
What keeps the nation state strong is patriotism and a love for its values.
Last edited by mmocdd4fd472cb; 2016-12-01 at 08:36 PM.
I see your side but, I think that as long as flag burning goes on, and as long as it pisses everyone off, we have not yet reached a level of apathy you describe. As long as there are those who hold the flag in high regard, patriotism is still alive and well. When flag burning no longer deeply offends people, that is when I will begin to worry.
News for you: I've participated in official U.S. Army funeral details (as a member of firing squads or pallbearers) where military funerals were given for veterans and we handed folded flags to widows and families of the deceased. I've had family killed or permanently disabled in idiotic U.S. wars, including Korea and Vietnam, and who've been harassed, beaten or arrested by the gov't that they were lawfully and rightfully protesting.
Don't tell me about being in anyone's shoes. I've been on every side of it.
But I don't want to hear this faux-patriotism spewed from knee-jerk "Support R Troopies!" "Thank Yew for Yer Service!" brainless, bullshit sloganeering that is peddled at every high school or sporting event now to prop up unconstitutional, imperialist, interventionist conflicts among the people.
A flag is merely a symbol or a marker. They are not sacred and don't possess some holy or magical power. They can be used for anything from honoring a military event or person, to representing a nation or state, to protesting that same gov't for the unconstitutional or illegal acts it may have committed, or policies, politicians or institutions that you oppose.
Any citizen can hoist it and salute it or spit on or burn it because that's their right under the law.
Last edited by Crissi; 2016-12-01 at 11:12 PM.
Wow, where to begin.
1. You mean like trying to put myself in the place of the mother listening to the loud-mouthed conservatives from Westboro Baptist Church, waving signs that your son was killed because God hates gays?
2. You don't want to make it illegal if it was done for the "right reasons", and in a "respectful manner". You're gonna have to elaborate on that for me, if you haven't gotten too many minor infractions already. ;0
3. What law gives a "reasonable" defense to someone attacking me? I can't imagine a successful plea of 'temporary insanity' due to witnessing a flag being burned a) for the wrong reasons, and/or b) in a disrespectful manner.
Last edited by Yseraboy; 2016-12-01 at 11:47 PM.
I take some solace in the fact that even though my snarky reply to someone's condescending rhetorical question earned me a 1-week ban, my post was not deleted. I was rather proud of that bit of snark, and I am glad it lives on.
Maybe you might want to go back and read the part where you state the flag is just cloth and where you inferred that anyone who sees the flag differently than yourself is jingoistic, which is a whole slew of insults in itself.
When presented with the idea that maybe you've never been presented with a situation where you could see that too some people the flag isnt just pretty cloth, you say you have first hand experience. Which brings up 2 possible conclusions. You are normal, but you are a liar.
Or you can't empathize with people because of an undiagnosed issue. Take a page from Patrick Bateman, if you can't actually feel you have to pretend.
You are simply so absorbed in your own ignorance that people other than yourself simply can't have opinion. Hence you being a fanboy of ignorance.
i could have sworn someone told me flag burning was illegal on the us.
2014 Gamergate: "If you want games without hyper sexualized female characters and representation, then learn to code!"
2023: "What's with all these massively successful games with ugly (realistic) women? How could this have happened?!"
1. Absolutely, they are a group of assholes too.
2. I said flag burning should be legal, and I've never moved from that stance. I warn that burning the flag and being generally disrespectful about it will turn more people against your cause. Also burning the flag for any old reason, like the teacher who stood on the flag in class because he felt like it, is going to turn flag burning into a meaningless gesture that will get you immediately labeled negatively.
3. Self-defense covers being incited into violence. And yes claiming self defense against incitement is a proper defense, it's the same as self defense against actual violence its covered under the same statute. And before you go pulling up fighting words which knocked down specifically flag burning, that's referring to flag burning as an offense, a back door way of making flag burning illegal.
You are also counting on a police force to actually arrest an individual who they will likely be sympathetic with, a prosecutor to bring charges against someone who clearly has a defense, and a jury to convict someone who will not find the plaintiff sympathetic.
it's a piece of cloth. It has no meaning but your own. If you're upset about flag burning you may have some Mental issues to sort out.
Pull the Stick out of your ass and Don't be so triggered. We have a Word for those types....babies.
It should be Legal, and Stay legal.
No. In fact, lets get rid of the Pledge of Allegiance too. We shouldn't have to pledge anything to a democratic republic.
"You know you that bitch when you cause all this conversation."
No you didn't, you implied it was meaningless, you can go back on what you said or man up.
You're also applying to me that I hold the flag up in some patriotic way, which I've never come close to even imply the flag to me is some kind of representation of my love for imperialistic America. You should be able to figure out how I view the flag from my posts.
Like I said earlier you believe that your opinion is the only valid one and there are no other options or viewpoints.