re: #112 b_sharp

Burning, or damaging a flag in any other way does nothing to those thousands of sacrifices or your memory of those sacrifices. The symbol is not the symbolized.

Those people who gave their time, their blood and even their lives did not do so for the flag, they did it for the people who shared the same values.

True, but someone who burns the flag is also making a symbolic statement, and that’s what people respond to. No one just casually sets fire to a flag for no special reason.

(Although my mother did once almost set fire to a (very small) Soviet flag at a dinner. There were candles on the table, and her friends were egging her on. And I think she’d had a couple of sips of wine.)