hoser said:

Defending the Flag
Ben Stein | June 30, 2006

The argument against is simply that one of our core values is free speech. Burning the flag is a form of speech, some courts have ruled, so burning it should be protected by the First Amendment, which protects free speech.

Well and good, except this argument just does not hold up. We already have many exceptions to a complete protection of free speech. You can't show child pornography online.

Child pornography includes an implicit crime, because creating it violates the law, and the situations where it is created usually involves more serious felonies, not to mention that those who look at it are also associated with such felonies.

Also, child pornography cannot have a constructive purpose.

hoser said:

You can't call members of various ethnic groups by slurring words that were common when I was a child. That's called hate speech, and it's barred by law in most if not all parts of the nation.

That's because that kind of speech went hand in hand with murder and several other crimes for centuries.

Also, ethnic slurs cannot not have a constructive purpose.

hoser said:

In some settings, you cannot tell a woman in your office that she looks sharp in her new sweater or tell a man that he has nice buns in his new trousers. That's called sexual harassment and it's been found to be illegal.

Again, because a lot of sexual assault and harassment went unchecked until recent decades, and so harassment was associated with sexual assault.

Also, sexual harassment cannot have a constructive purpose.

Notice the pattern? Only if an act is primarily associated with a felony, and in no situation can have a constructive purpose, does it become illegal (excluding satiral uses, etc.)

What could possibly be a constructive purpose for flag burning, you ask? Well, I just saw a very convincing one yesterday on TV, someone brought up that a a US Flag made in China would be protected under this amendment, so if a US worker wanted to protest the fact that the flag wasn't made in America by burning it, he would be arrested for it, just like a Chinese citizen would be arrested for burning the Chinese Flag in China.

That's why you can't make laws against symbolism, there are too many interpretations. Child pornography is not symbolic. Ethnic slurs are not symbolic. Sexual harassment is not symbolic. But as Stein says himself, the flag IS a symbol.

I also have to point out one other thing, which is that all this jingoistic "protect the flag" dick rubbing is based on the premise that to not do so is fundamentally unpatriotic. The problem is, the fact that we don't have such an amendment already suggests under that logic that every American for the past two hundred years has been unpatriotic, including the founding fathers. Or did they just overlook this?

Looks like I just won Ben Stein's money.

Happy Fourth of July.