You can tell when it's election year in this country when the dumbest ideas come up for approval for Congress to codify into law. I don't understand why our lawmakers want to add Constitutional amendments restricting rights? Why start that precedent? I actually think they'd be shocked if they got something ridiculous to pass. They just want to appeal to their constituents, not really change anything. It's a dangerous game they play, regardless of their intentions.So flag burning is up for debate...again. They want to make it a constitutional amendment to ban this practice. I have said this before but it'd be interesting bookends if it passes, the last amendment superseding the first.
Personal view aside, I don't understand why we need law enforcement for this action? Is the practice really that rampant that force is needed to respond? Does our law enforcement not have anything better to do? As I understand, the number of yearly cases of this is virtually 0. It's something like less than 100 cases of flag burning in a country of 300 million people, if you don't count the patriotic groups that are disposing of old flags in some ritual fashion that makes it ok to burn it. And how do you enforce that? How do you write that law in a way that millions of police officers can discern between the proper way a flag is being burned and the improper? It can't be done. Mistakes will be made, assumptions incorrectly created, conclusions improperly drawn. You just can't do it on a national level anyway. Not even on a state level. Maybe you can neighborhood-level...MAYBE.
So a few people want to burn the American flag every year. Why do you care? Because it's offensive to you? If we passed a law for everything that offends people, we'd be living in a police state and no one could do anything! We'd be in a country so full of laws, the Nazi's would say, "That's cold."
You might think public flag burning hurts the country's image, creates disrespect, incites rebellion, etc. I really don't see that happening. Not as long as people like you are committed to protecting that flag and people like me swear allegiance to our country. They will never convince us otherwise. We will stand together, united and not be swayed by these protestors. Not with blackmail, not with torture and certainly not by asking us to bear witness to a burning of a piece of fabric. I know it won't change my mind about my country.
So let them do it. Best case scenario, they burn themselves during the stunt. Why would you want to stop Darwinism?
We don't need the amendment.
