A young husband loses his wife to cancer and feels God has let him down: in his grief he burns the Bible. However others may perceive this as offensive, he has the right to this function or dysfunction, provided it is his bible and has done so on his own property. If he melodramatically wishes to make a point and burns it in the public square or on church grounds, it is a criminal act and not his right to free speech.
No one has the right to burn a flag draped on the coffin of a fallen soldier, not even a family member who wishes to express his or her protest of the war. However, should the spouse or sole possessor of the folded flag at burial wishes to burn it, he or she may do so if in the privacy of grief or futility but not as public desecration to the memory of a war hero.
If as the Supreme Court has ruled that flag burning is a matter of free speech and the right of assemblage to demonstrate such offensiveness, the court has missed the point completely. That the flag in question was privately purchased with the intent to desecrate publicly does not excuse the dysfunction unless on the perpetrator’s front lawn. We do not have the right to destroy the Ten Commandments or the Cross on ecclesiastic property or through established practice such monuments on public property, but if private persons become disillusioned with their own beliefs there is every right to dismantle whatever religious display exists on their own private property, but on no other. On Guantanamo if the Koran is the private property of the prisoner or has been issued by international organizations, then desecration is not only offensive but criminal; however, if the Koran has been distributed by the Navy or Defense Departments, what they give can be taken away as punishment for bad behavior.
Through accepted practice Old Glory is not only symbolic but through blood and tears of so many wars, it has taken on legitimate sanctity for the nation and should therefore be protected by law, not simply by military law. Moreover, crass commercialism of the flag should be banned — a pizza stain on an Old Glory ‘t’ shirt or a stars and stripes ass-snapping beach towel is as offensive. Burning the flag as a public demonstration privately purchased or not is an affront to the millions who have given their lives for it — rightly or wrongly — tantamount to throwing eggs at the Iwo Jima monument.
Copyright © 2005 Richard R. Kennedy All rights reserved. Revised: July 5, 2005.
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