Posted on 06/27/2006 3:21:49 PM PDT by Sub-Driver
Debates - or discussions - are generally best when civil, not to mention generally more productive!
'Til then...
Should desecration of the King James Bible be outlawed, in your opinion; or do you think it should remain legal to do so?
I mostly agree - but this does seem to be one of those loose ends that, if left loose, will keep coming up until it's tied - one way or the other.
It's an interesting conundrum to think about though...
I was an American History major and I have no clue what you are talking about. Are you talking about people who spoke of overthrowing the government forcibly? That is a far cry from speaking out against a government's actions or burning a flag.
Speech is either oral or written.
Acts are NOT speech.
Do you consider flag burning a symbolic act? While we're at it, do you consider speaking a symbolic act?
Do you consider flag burning a symbolic act? While we're at it, do you consider speaking a symbolic act?
Please, nmh, if you want to be taken seriously, don't use New Jersey law as an argument! ;)
That's completely different. That's theft. A prosecutable crime. However charging someone with disposal of their own property, no matter how some may 'feel' about it, is wrong.
I agree with you. It was just ironic that the flag burner in the case (Texas vs. Johnson, I think) that went to the Supreme Court, could have been charged with theft, but never was.
Fine. Obtain their robes in a legal manner, and you can burn them if you wish.
Why not? It's peaceful and it sends a message--it's no more inherently bad than standing up with a sign that says "Down with the US" or whatever--which everyone would agree is protected speech.
Yes, flag burning is designed to get a reaction, but it's designed to get a reaction in the same way as, say, a KKK rally. The message is deliberately offensive, but it doesn't mean that it's not protected speech.
Anyhow, we're done with this issue for the time being, thank God, so I guess it's a moot point. At the end of the day, though, I've just never heard an articulate defense of a flag burning amendment that at its core wasn't about punishing a certain type of offensive speech. That smacks me as a bad idea.
The flag burning amendment reminds me of De Tocqueville's analysis of the Press in "Democracy in America:"
"If anyone could point out an intermediate and yet a tenable position between the complete independence and the entire servitude of opinion, I should perhaps be inclined to adopt it, but the difficulty is to discover this intermediate position."
Indeed.
Acts are NOT speech.
So sign language isn't speech? I think you will have a very difficult time defending this position.
You know, additionally, if you claim acts aren't speech, did you not think it was speech when that poor POW from Vietnam got on TV and blinked, in Morse code, the message "T-O-R-T-U-R-E?" Wasn't that speech? But it was merely an act--no oral or written communication. He was saying, things, of course, but that wasn't his real message. His real message was "torture." Isn't that speech?
Whether it's sign language, Morse code, or even smoke signals, I think you have to concede that anything that conveys a message is speech. And more importantly, flag burning is political speech--and if any speech deserves heightened protection, it's political speech. Yes, reasonable people can debate as to whether Mapplethorpe's photographs are "speech" and whether they convey messages and whether they ought to be subject to First Amendment protection. But flag burning? It is designed to send a political message, and I just can't see how that isn't speech and it shouldn't be protected.
If you can give me a definition of "speech" that includes things like sign language and Morse code (which are both obviously speech) and yet, at the same time, excludes flag burning, I'll listen. But I think that's your first hurdle.
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