To Burn Or Not To Burn

Anyone who knows me knows that I am a great lover of our beloved flag, Old Glory, I take with a personal interest the proposed Constitutional Amendment to ban flag burning.

I dearly love both and they are not mutually exclusive but should one protect the other?

For the uninformed The Constitution does not grant us rights, it boldly declares that we are born with these rights and endowed with them from our Creator. The Constitution places restrictions on the government and restricts Congress from infringing on these rights, it does not give us rights nor does the government.

The American Flag.

The beacon of hope and freedom for billions throughout our brief history. Our banner has been carried into war torn countries to bring peace and it has cleaned out rat hole countries of corruption and moral decay. When the two super powers met face to face our flag prevailed to spread freedom to countries that had never experienced freedom.

It brought The Wall down and encouraged people to govern themselves instead of tyrants.

Our flag never bows to another.

It boils my blood to see our flag displayed in a manner that does not befit it. When the blue field of stars is not in the correct corner, when a flag is out at night without a light to grace it, when it is ripped and torn but the owners refuse to replace it out of neglect. Them's fightin' words to me.

I honestly don't feel that there should be an amendment to ban the desecration of our flag.

I shall defend your right to burn our flag.

Don't do it around me and if I catch you I'm going to put a hurting on you for such a disgraceful action.

Sadly though there are places in this very country where such an act would be encouraged if not praised. Freedom of political speech is what sets up apart from many nations, we can protest, we can assemble a group of people to tell our side without the fear of being imprisoned for decades like what routinely happens just a short distance from Florida.

We can speak out against our leaders if the need arise without fear of being executed for our views.

As distasteful as the burning of our flag is to me I believe that the people of our country would do all the protecting of our flag should it fall into the hands of some unwashed hippy communist for burning.

Simply put, if we ban the physical desecration of our flag what other freedoms, no matter how horrible, should we restrict next if our leadership shifts to such a radical point of view that our flag and freedom becomes meaningless?