Posted on 12/05/2016 7:26:20 AM PST by reaganaut1
Last week, president-elect Trump sent a tweet that ought to alarm the majority of Americans who voted for another candidate as well as most of those who voted for him. Here’s what Trump wrote: “Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag – if they do, there must be consequences – perhaps loss of citizenship or a year in jail!”
The very last thing we need in America is more activism meant to punish people for thinking the wrong things. Our college campuses are awash in left-wing thought control, whereby students who say or write anything that hypersensitive students or administrators find offensive can be punished. That’s bad enough. We do not need a right-wing counter-movement led by Trump doing the same.
One troubling aspect of Trump’s declaration is that it bespeaks either ignorance of or hostility to the Supreme Court’s First Amendment jurisprudence. We have considerable history with cases involving governmental efforts at stamping out dissent generally and involving the flag specifically.
In the early 40s, West Virginia punished and expelled students of the Jehovah’s Witness faith because they, following their religion, declined to salute the flag and recite the Pledge of Allegiance in school. The state had sound precedent for doing so, a Supreme Court decision (Minersville School District v. Gobitis) that permitted such punishment.
But when the Court heard a similar case in 1943, West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, it wisely reversed itself. (As I recently wrote, stare decisis shouldn’t matter when constitutional rights are at stake and this is a good example.)
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
In general, the same people that are all upset about Trump pointing out that flag burners are loses, are the same people who are all for banning so-called “hate speech”, which is speech Leftists disagree with.
Everything alt is neue again.
It’s the American flag, not your flag so you shouldn’t get the right to burn it
Actually- I always thought it WAS a crime
I saw a citizen take a flag away from a Westboro “baptist church” POS, who was walking on it in the mud.
The WBC freak said: “Give me back my flag.”
The large PO’d guy said: “Come over here and get it.”
So now will all the idiot libertarians be rising to the defense of flag-burners like they do for the defense of drug dealers?
Yeah, while we're at it, burn the sowdie flag too.
The issue came within one vote several years ago of becoming law. That was long before Trump and the proposed legislation was co-sponsored by the hildabeast.
OK, it is FREE SPEECH (Supreme Court). Now is it HATE SPEECH? Love to watch the liberals get all tangled up in their own definitions.
It's the idiot authoritarians who don't seem to understand the meaning of the First and Fourth Amendments, for starters, and seem to want to "rise to the defense" of Tyranny.
Actual Freedom carries inherent challenges, and demagogues always seem to be looking for tidy little shortcuts.
Burning the flag is abhorrent, but it's also Free Speech...
Old news.
Trump is not the only one who thinks burning our flag should be criminalized. In fact, Trump is mild about it.
“What the hell does the OH,OH mean?”
...a pathetic reference to Horshack character on Welcome Back Cotter?
Wrong.
Up until a fairly recent SCOTUS decision, the national emblem was protected by law from desecration by low life malcontnets.
The two SCOTUS decisions on this subject were 4-5 decisions and Rehnquist, a distinguished jurist, dissented from one of those decisions.
No rights are unlimited and that goes for this case.
Further, the First Amendment protects freedom of SPEECH and of the PRESS. It says NOTHING about ACTIONS.
Desecrating an American Flag doesn’t fall into either category, is a insult to every American, undermines our self-respect at home and makes us a object of ridicule overseas.
I agree with Trump. People who desecrate the American Flag should be punished - severely. It is NOT a legitimate form of protest.
“...Our college campuses are awash in left-wing thought control...”
IMO - much of this is because of the federal student loan program. Almost anyone qualifies, few if any restrictions apply, and universities have a guaranteed income from the US tax payers so they do whatever they want. As a result they push tuitions higher and higher, they hire any kind of nutcase and call him/her a professor and suppress free speech of conservative voices. Yet it is conservative voter dollars that support their narrow mindedness. The student loan program is the root of the many leftist problems we see. Again, IMHO.
if burning the fag flag is a ‘hate crime’ and enough for charges (and jail time)...
then so is burning the American flag
BINGO!
In the ruling that de-criminalized flag-burning, 4 of 5 USSC justices agreed with Trump’s position, and Trump’s position agrees with the law prior to the ruling. So, agree with Trump or not, it can’t really be called an extreme position. And - contrary to the article - it doesn’t tell people what they can “think,” nor does it prevent them from saying anything. Just recently, a west Virginia mayor was forced to resign because of an offensive Tweet about Michelle Obama. Where was Forbes then?
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