#flag burning

[spideypunx]

[culturevulturette]

Both should be protected political speech, provided the flag being burned is the property of the person/people doing the burning.

[sophieinwonderland]

burning a flag is not the same as flying one, and forgive me if I have a little more love for our country's flag than any other flag anyway because it's supposed to stand for everyone here not just one group over another.

I am defending freedom of speech, enshrined by the 1st Amendment!

The American Flag stands for nothing if not the sacred right to light it ablaze and let it burn in a glorious inferno in protest of the government!

This is what American freedom of speech looks like!

I believe in the American flag as a symbol of freedom. I believe in the values it represents!

One of those values just so happens to be that everyone has the right to light that sucker on fire to express their grievances with the state of the country.

I think you need to ask yourself what is more important to you. Is it the piece of cloth or is it the values it represents and the freedoms it stands for? Would you rather burn our liberty to protect a cloth, or allow people the right to protect our liberty by burning a cloth?

[todaysdocument]

Letter from Frank Sinatra to George H. W. Bush

Collection GB-WHORM: Records of the White House Office of Records Management (George H.W. Bush Administration)Series: Subject Files on Judicial and Legal Matters

[handwritten top left] 8

[handwritten top right] 50258

[handwritten left margin] Jan Burmeister

FRANK SINATRA

June 29, 1989

Dear Mr. President:

I applaud you long and loud for your reaction to

the Supreme Court ruling which permits the

burning of the banner you so proudly hail to the

world.

Be assured, Sir, I march in your parade with

millions of our fellow countrymen and women who

are outraged at the behavior of those to whom

our flag in flames receive the benediction of the

First Amendment behind which too many have hidden

for too long.

And I must add that if torching the ultimate

symbol of decency and freedom in the world is our

generation's expression of freedom of speech then

surely the matter now rejected by the Court must

enter the legislative arena where this monumental

wrong must be righted.

I urge you to be the Washington and Jefferson and

Lincoln of our time and continue speaking out as

I feel they would have spoken out had such an

insult been legalized in their occupancy of what

is now your office.

God bless you and your Barbara. The mountains you

climb are taller than ours. We know that. We also

know our faith in you extends from the East to the

West and that our dreams and hopes are in safe hands.

You have, as always, my prayers.

Respectfully,

[signed] Francis Albert

President George Bush

The White House

Washington, D.C. 20500

[nando161mando]

For those that celebrate

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Nikki McCann Ramírez at Rolling Stone:

On Friday, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made a show of selectively exiting the presidential race and throwing his support behind Donald Trump, hailing the former president as a champion of free speech. Less than a week later, Trump is already promising to crush First Amendment protections if elected in November.  On Monday, Trump complained about pushback to a proposal to sentence people to a year in jail for burning the American flag.  “I wanna get a law passed […] You burn an American flag, you go to jail for one year. Gotta do it — you gotta do it,” Trump said.  “They say, ‘Sir, that’s unconstitutional.’ We’ll make it constitutional.”

People may tell Trump that jailing anyone who burns the flag is unconstitutional because burning the flag is protected by the First Amendment. In 1989, the Supreme Court ruled in Texas v. Johnson that while the desecration of the flag may be objectionable, “If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.” RFK Jr. has long claimed that the government is censoring him in various ways, and on Friday blamed his failed attempt at a viable run for the presidency on “16 months of censorship, of not being able to get on any network really except for Fox.”

Kennedy added that the Democratic Party had “become the party of the war, censorship, corruption, Big Pharma, Big Tech, big money.” He cited Trump’s stances on free speech, the war in Ukraine, and the war on children as his justification for endorsing the former president. “These are the principal causes that persuaded me to leave the Democratic Party and run as an independent, and now to throw my support to President Trump,” he said. The endorsement may have also had something to do with Trump’s receptiveness to bringing Kennedy into his administration if he wins. Earlier this month The Washington Post reported that Kennedy’s campaign had attempted to secure meetings with Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign to discuss a potential role for him in her administration should she win the White House — to no avail. Kennedy held similar discussions with the Trump campaign in the time period surrounding the Republican National Convention. 

Avowed 1st Amendment enemy Donald Trump seeks to restrict the 1A if he is elected this November.

If you want to see the 1st Amendment protected, vote Kamala Harris!

[aholefilledwithtwigs]

✨chill lofi beats for burning american flags✨

🔥🇺🇸🔥

[eretzyisrael]

Source

[kropotkindersurprise]

May 1, 2023 - Some antifascists used May Day to collect and dispose of some roadside trash from their area in Georgia, USA. [video]

[secular-jew]

I wonder what Obama is doing in England?

[dadaonice]

Fuck monarchy.

[aquietwhyme]

Kamela Harris, the presumptive presidential nominee for the US's left-most major party (ha!) thinks burning cloth is a more disgusting act than murdering a hundred thousand people, and that's all you really need to know to understand the state of US politics at the moment.

[emperornorton47]

[sophieinwonderland]

please explain how burning the one flag that represents freedom for all 50 states with all 50 stars, is "protecting our liberty"

So this is weird...

They blocked me and all of their asks disappeared from my inbox on desktop... But apparently I can still respond on mobile?

Tumblr really needs to get this fixed.

Anyway, taking this opportunity to reiterate... Protecting free speech means protecting speech that you don't like.

The flag, at its best, is a symbol of freedom and unity, yes. But it is also a symbol of imperialism and colonialism. This is the flag under which we detained Asian immigrants in World War II for their ethnicity. It's the flag of a country that displaced native Americans, and spent hundreds of years committing a cultural genocide against them. It's a flag but oversaw a century of slavery.

It's the flag under which we have committed numerous war crimes, from Vietnam to the fraudulent invasion of Iraq that was based on lies of weapons of mass destruction that didn't exist. It's a flag that destabilized countries around the world and performed illegal experiments on our own citizens.

It's a flag of the country of the Tulsa race massacre. A flag of the country that has one of the highest prison populations in the world. Much of which are from marginalized communities.

I could go on and on listing all of the horrible things that the flag stands for. What this flag means is different to different people.

There are a lot of good reasons that people don't like this country. There are a lot of good reasons that people don't like the flag that represents it.

But besides the emotional reasons for burning a flag... There is one very practical reason.

When you are going out and protesting against corruption and injustice, those in power will try to ignore you as best they can.

But you light the flag on fire, and people will pay attention.

If the part of the flag that you like is the positive parts, the dedication to freedom and free speech most of all... Then it is your duty to those values to protect the right of people who don't share your views to burn it in protest of the negative things that the flag stands for.

[raneyserket]

Happy 4th.