re: #155 SanFranciscoZionist

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.)

An American who publicly burns the American flag, in protest against, say, “oppression”, admits by his actions that which he denies in word: that we are free.

Along with other reasons, the flag deserves not to be treated thus, precisely because even burning it is tolerated. There’s a religious lesson here: if a book is holy and good, then doing evil in the name of defending the honor and reputation of the book achieves the opposite of the intended effect. The book gets a bad reputation not by being burned, but by being used as justification for the murder of innocents. So who, in the final analysis, has shown the least respect for the book? Eh?