You honestly think burning a replica of our flag is "evil'? That's a big, heavy hitting word used in proper context. Evil? The SAME evil as MASSACRING PEOPLE? That's insane to suggest.
The other is not offensive it's absolutely unacceptable. It is permanent, evil, unchangeable and murderous.
Yet day after day I see people posting several times a day about people (degrading the flag in any way) needing to be banished, shot, exiled (if you don't like my flag, leave, I'll help you pack) arrested, jailed, fined, beaten up, etc. But Assad (just a current example) is attacking his people with chlorine gas (horrifically painful) and our own police are militarizing to a breaking point, the dam is cracking, they're killing people, kicking people in the face as they comply, shooting their dogs, seizing their property, planting evidence and getting away with unimaginable assaults and even sexual assaults (I was one) and false charges for city/county/personal monetary gain, and people just sit and say "stop resisting", "stop committing crimes". And all the stuff going on over seas or over our border (Mexican drug cartels slaughtering people in such grisly ways by the hundreds and selling girls into sex trafficking/slaves) is "not our business" and "not directly affecting us".
Not to mention some froot loops burn, poo on, stomp on, run over, a flag and people cringe & grab their hearts like someone just shit in their lap...and it's okay to feel like that! My dad did the equivalent of three tours in Vietnam. He went TDY after that, he did his 20 years in the Air Force, was proud as hell of it and loved it. We NEVER flew a flag or displayed patriotic stuff at our home until after 9/11, then he allowed us to go buy a nice outdoor flag, and we did our best to follow the proper procedures of display and handling TO HONOR MY DAD'S SERVICE more than cater to a piece of fabric with cool designs on it.
The part people keep forgetting about those wack-a-dorks who defile the flag, is that they live (the ones we're talking about for clarification sake) in America. The very country we have the right and freedom TO defile the flag and be protected.
You can't say "deport or jail everyone who burns the flag because they're spitting in the face of our men and women who died fighting for their right to..." Uh, Oh! Let me finish, Their right to do exactly what they're doing to the flag.
Freedom is freedom. It's not Freedom BUT...
I am an American. I love the shit outta my country. I think it's grand and beautiful and wild and young, and free and terrible and naive all at the same time, but we're learning. And thank Dog Lord we don't hang our people in the streets from cranes for all to see if they speak out against a government we don't agree with.
That's true freedom.
I will NEVER be happy about or agree with someone doing bad things to our flag, but that they do, doesn't change how I feel about my country, it doesn't change the beauty, power, strength, leadership, hope, bounty, promise and future of my wonderful country in the very least when someone does. It actually says more about them than anything else.
They have their own internal issues or attention seeking problems to work on if defacing a fabric representation of our flag gives them jollies and pyro boners.
I noticed no one complained when the attention seeking bitch who "saved a flag from being stepped on at a demonstration and got arrested" (all in a publicity staged stunt, mind you) was photographed naked, wrapped in a flag, with it clearly dragging the ground and touching her genitals. I found that tacky. And two-faced.
I agree the above pictured comparison is a bit askew. Not quite equal, but I posted it because for weeks I have seen repetitive, multiple posts about being anti-flag abusing, but nothing about our own people who suffer, starve, are being killed, assaulted, not just by police (although we pay their goddamned salaries and buy their fucking abuse weapons so they owe us more Serve And Protect and less Punish and Enslave) but also by each other. Floyd Mayweather had his sweat mopped up by a hundred dollar bill. He also burned one (filmed) at a night club. I know children who wore dirty, too small coats to school all winter who could have used that money.
Which leads me to my point.
Our focus, is on the wrong goddamned thing. And no fucking way is burning a flag "evil".
http://theantimedia.org/michelle-manhart/
“The flag is an iconic symbol for freedom. If you are going to fight for a cause and use the First Amendment – how are you going to stomp and trample the icon that gives you that right?”
No ma’am. The flag does not give anyone rights. The government does not give anyone rights. The US Constitution does not give anyone rights. Those rights are “self-evident” or people were “endowed by their creator” with them. They existed before the flag was sewn. The flag is a symbol. You cannot honor the symbol while destroying the very thing it is supposed to symbolize. You desecrated the idea of the flag, ma’am, when you decided your worship of a colored piece of cloth was more important than someone’s unalienable rights. Your attempt at stifling the US Constitution is far more insulting to the flag than students using it for shock value during a protest.
From the article.
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