Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair
“You should get a one-year jail sentence if you do anything to desecrate the American flag,” former (and possibly future) president Donald Trump told the hosts of Fox & Friends on July 25.
In a rare moment of at least partial agreement with Trump, likely Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris says “I condemn the burning of the American flag. That flag is a symbol of our highest ideals as a nation and represents the promise of America. It should never be desecrated in that way.”
Both were referring to pro-Palestinian protesters who stole flags from in front of Washington, DC’s Union Station before burning them.
I condemn that too, by the way — not because flags were burned, but because those flags apparently didn’t belong to the people who burned them.
The standard defense of flag-burning, affirmed by the US Supreme Court, treats flag-burning “speech” that enjoys the protection the First Amendment.
Well, OK, I get that. Whether it’s technically “speech” or not it’s at least expressive conduct, and I’m all for freedom of non-violent expressive conduct.
But to me, what it’s really about is property rights.
If you own a piece of cloth — even a piece of cloth with a particular pattern on it that makes it into what my friend and fellow political writer Kent McManigal calls a “Holy Pole Quilt,” possessing quasi-religious-relic qualities to certain cultists — it’s yours.
Not Donald Trump’s.
Not Kamala Harris’s.
Yours.
You don’t get to ride in their limousines; they don’t get to tell you what to do with your flag.
The exceptions to that rule are simple, and should be obvious:
You don’t get to strangle someone with your flag.
If you want to burn it, you have to do so in a way that doesn’t endanger the lives or property of others.
Apart from exceptions of that type, what you do with it is your business and no one else’s.
If you want to “desecrate” it in some way — burn it, draw a thin blue line across it, cut it up to make yourself a g-string — have at.
Personally, I use two flags (one “American” and one representing my favorite college football team) as window curtains. Want them? Molon labe!
If you steal someone else’s flag, that’s a crime and you’re a thief … just as it would be a crime and you would be a thief if you stole a candy bar, a coffee cup, or a Corolla. The penalty (return or restitution, and perhaps punitive damages) should be the same for all four crimes.
I’d rather burn every flag in the country than watch Trump and Harris wrap themselves in those flags to score cheap political points with low-IQ, short attention span voters.
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