No, Flag Burning is Not Speech

UPDATE – Donald Trump said a really dumb thing this week.

Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag – if they do, there must be consequences – perhaps loss of citizenship or year in jail!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 29, 2016

And we will probably be hearing about it on Saturday Night Live and every late night talk show for a year, up to and including that venerable annual Stupid Republican Roast, the White House Correspondents Dinner.

So why was President-Elect Trump’s statement dumb?

Well, because it is perfectly legal to burn a U.S. flag and the Supreme Court has ruled it constitutional… and the left wing media have ratified it.

And those are the only reasons.

Which is why Trump’s argument is not so dumb after all.

Yes, the revered conservative Justice Antonin Scalia sided with the majority on the above-noted decisions, and Scalia was wrong. And no, I am not a lawyer, but I don’t need to be to read, and the Court’s decisions on flag desecration are hardly accepted across the board as settled law.

The 1989 rulings in Texas vs. Johnson and the subsequent U.S. vs. Eichman were 5/4 decisions, however, as is most often the case, they were not decided along liberal-conservative lines. Scalia was not the only one to go off the reservation. In the latter case, the very liberal Justice Stevens and the liberal-leaning Reagan mistake Sandra Day O’Conner dissented.

Also, since that time lawyers and lawmakers from both sides of the aisle, including U.S. senators Orrin Hatch and Max Baucus have seen flag desecration as something more than speech.

And get this. Hillary Rodham Clinton cosponsored the Flag Protection Act of 2005 — not that we can take Hillary’s words or actions as valid reflections of her opinion on anything.

But beyond all of this, the flag is not an opinion, which everyone but left wing Democrats seem to believe should be protected.

The flag is an object, and to desecrate it is assault, in my opinion, not speech.

Not only is flag burning an assault on every American who has sacrificed his or her life or limb for this country, but it is also an assault on this singular standard of freedom itself.

We did not sit idly by and support the South’s “right” to strike the flag and secede from the Union of 1861, and neither should we sit by now and allow the desecration of the banner that flies over this Union.

I hope President Donald Trump remains true to his word, and appoints judges and justices who will strike down liberal decisions the Supremes and other federal judges have passed off as Constitutional law over the last fifty years.

Because only then will America be truly restored to its former greatness.

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