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Many U.S. veterans I know support the right of freedom of expression, to include flag burning. They say they feel its disrespectful but its the right they bleed for, for people to express themselves
I remember a case where this singer burnt an american flag in protest (I think korean war) and the president was grilled on his take on the matter and he daid that whats beautiful about our country, that we can do these things, and that im the countries we are fighting agianst thier citizens dont have the same freedoms as americans.
If you aren't for freedom of speech when its an expression you don't agree with, you aren't for freedom of speech.
People forget that freedom of speech also includes the discourse of hate
This idea that the military "fights for our freedom" needs to die. It's complete horseshit. The last conflict the US military was involved in that could remotely be considered as a defense of Americans (the populace, not the oligarchs) was WW2. Everything since has been neocolonialism and gangster activity. Even prior to WW2, their primary function over their life has been genocide and colonialism. It was the US military that brought the world concentration camps. If there is any hope for Americans, we need to kill the civic religion.
WWII is not a good example even. The oligarchy helped fund the Nazi and then made sure the Jews had no where to go. Then we went in and helped slaughter countless civilians for a problem we created. That clearly makes us the good guys riiiight?
Hey, it's cool that some of them understand the law, but.... also, I don't think veterans have any special privilege or insight into how our freedoms work.
I don't think any of us need their permission to exercise our rights. I don't think that's what you were going for, but I'm just saying this because so much of the discussion often seems to go to what "the troops" think about it. It just doesn't matter.
I was bringing it up half out of people tending to use veterans and soldiers as justification for "cracking down" on things like flag burning, saying how it disrespects our troops or something. When 1) as you say, thier opinion doesn't matter and 2) They also aren't as offended as republicans say they are.
It's my first amendment right to call the troops babykillers and to thank their Jodies for their service. And if someone wants the government to stop me then they're anti American. The first amendment is especially for the right to criticize and mock the government and her agents.
Fair enough. Also, I should not have had that last sentence worded that way. I should have said that their opinion does not matter more than the opinions of non-veterans, IMHO. Being Americans, their opinion does matter as much as any other, but still the law is the law and unless the unhinged cons get an amendment, freedom should still be a thing...even on something like burning a flag.
I don't even understand what is so offensive about flag burning. It's something teenagers and sheltered young adults do as a feeble form of symbolic rebellion. Genuinely, who cares? It's not like the flag has some kind of mystical power. It's not the original version. 9/10, it's just a cheap copy that was purchased specifically for that demonstration.
I'm a grown man. Why the fuck do I care about teenagers skateboarding in the church parking lot? I got my own problems.
100% this. I remember when some dopey kid tried to burn the flag at a campus I was at, and one of my roommates was simply beside himself with fury over it.
I thought the whole thing was a great big bowl of wrong. The dumbass that was "protesting" was butthurt about something that had nothing to do with America or the flag, IIRC. He just wanted to be edgy or whatever. But the fury from the reactionaries, including my roommate - hilarious.
My roommate even wrote a letter of outrage to the administration. I mean, he was literally beet red with rage over it. His letter tried to work in the "fire safety" angle too, because deep down, even the dumbass reactionary knew the law when it comes to freedom.
When you make kids swear allegiance to a piece of cloth for years, you get stuff like that.
Yeah, I was surrounded by many of them during K-12. We had to stand and pledge allegiance every single day. I usually mumbled my way through it in the early years. At some point, I just stopped doing the mumbling any more. It felt so mindless and cultish.
I remember some girl in high school doing some mock outrage at seeing me doing this, but more in a flirty way, like "you're so baaaaad, boy!" kind of way.
Luckily I had parents that did a lot of the Lord's work in counter-brainwashing when I was at home, LOL, so none of the "stand for the anthem and reciting the pledge" every morning at government school (with the 1950s red scare phrase added in, mind you to scare away the godless commies!) didn't really stick.
I'm still patriotic as HELL. And I love this country's supposed ideals and founding documents like nobody's business. But not in the way the brainless cons think of "patriotism". Their false patriotism is a pantload.
It wasn't CMU, was it?
No, this was Penn State, ages ago. I don't think it made the papers or anything that I know of. Probably not even a police report. Some dumbazz tried to light a flag with a Zippo apparently - several students, including some associates, classmates and friends of mine saw him try it. It was inside a dorm building.
Obviously people restrained him/separated the flag from his Zippo, not because they were fighting for gawd, mom, apple pie and the MURICAN FLAG, but because it's a pretty fucking stupid idea to burn a piece of cloth inside of a building...
Neither my roommate and I were there. No flag was actually burned or even really charred as I understand it. I'm pretty sure it was his own flag. But my roommate who heard about it just about popped a blood vessel over it, LOL. And not really the blatant fire safety aspect. That's when I saw first-hand just how irrational some people are about other people exercising freedoms.
Dang. That's nuts but seems right for teenagers lol. I ask because the same thing happened at CMU in like 2002, but it did make the papers. The whole city turned it into a fucking thing.
Yeah, this was before the 'net really took off. I don't think it even hit the local paper and I don't think cops were called. I think it was something most of the students found out about second-hand. And really went no further because it didn't progress.
These days with everyone taking out their fucking phones for everything, it would have hit social media before the cops even arrived - and oh yeah, I'm sure they would have been called in, stat, given what snowflakes today's right wing are.
And then I'm sure the usual pipeline for Bullshit Mountain would have blown it wayyyy out of proportion and turned it into something for right wing poutrage, LOL.
Plus that flag was statistically likely to be made not in the USA