Flag Burning
I may be the rare conservative who is relieved that the "Flag Burning Amendment" did not pass. I just can't see wasting all the time and energy over this issue and I don't beleive it merits a Constitutional amendment.
Additionally, I think the sponsors have gone about this issue the wrong way. I would favor a law that provides that in any civil suit for damages brought by one who burned the flag against the offended bystander who beat the living crap out of him, that the flag burner shall be adjuded no less than 95% at fault for his own damages. I would call it the Rick Monday Law, in honor of that Dodgers' save.
Additionally, I think the sponsors have gone about this issue the wrong way. I would favor a law that provides that in any civil suit for damages brought by one who burned the flag against the offended bystander who beat the living crap out of him, that the flag burner shall be adjuded no less than 95% at fault for his own damages. I would call it the Rick Monday Law, in honor of that Dodgers' save.
posted by stewdog | 7:47 AM | Permalink
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5 comments
5 Comments:
I share your relief. If I go to the store and buy a flag, it's my personal property, and I can do with it as I please. I would never burn the flag, but the federal government has no business telling me I can't. There's nothing "conservative" about the proposed amendment at all; it's actually quite the opposite.
I'm with you, SD. More fun to smack them upside the head than to arrest them.
Yeah, I'm with the rest of you on this one.
Jeff, your point about personal property is interesting. Someone in the blogosphere (can't remember who, but it might have been Michael Barone) wondered whether the same people who oppose flag-burning bans also opposed McCain-Feingold.
Do any of our legal scholars here know anything about cross-burning bans, though? I mean, obviously, you can't burn a cross without permission on someone else's property, but what about on your own property? I have much less problem with bans on cross-burning, probably because I see it more as an act than as a form of expression.
KM, there was a rather famous Supremes ruling on cross-burning. I don't have the time and can't remember the name of the case.
At any rate, the liberal tendancies on the court tried to outlaw it as a type of hate-speech and Justice Thomas (who has a powerful perspective on it) wrote the prevailing opinion which argued for allowing it as long as it was not in violation of another's property.
I see flag-burning as the over-stepping conservative equivalent to the liberal cross-burning issue.
Free speech exists, as long as it does not intrude upon another's personal freedoms under the bill of rights.
Thanks, WD. Very interesting. Maybe I'll look up the case during my free time. Except I'll have to choose between that and sleep. Sleep's been winning out lately.
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