MadameBastet-Firing-Neurons

Freedom's Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Burn

I wasn't going to go here, but this is an issue that seriously
gets me really fired up, pun completely intended.
With nothing better to do - I mean, besides watch the body
count rise in Iraq, watch the oil companies rape America
and laugh, ignore the immigration problem and watch
Israel pound the shit out of the Palestinians, Congress got bored
and decided to bring out the old "let's ban flag burning" amendment.

Thankfully, it did not pass. But this time it almost did. It was close.
Too close. Frankly, I'm surprised it didn't pass, what with this
myopic Congress full of ignorant, jingoistic, nationalistic, uber-patriotic
pussies who have already betrayed the United States Constitution in
ways our Founding Fathers could never have imagined.

I have already felt so massively betrayed by this government,
I don't know how I could feel any worse. However, amending the
Constitution to ban flag burning is akin to simply announcing
"You now live in a dictatorship. The United States is taking away
yet another of your freedoms, one that is ironically protected in
Amendent One of the Constitution. This is tyranny. Welcome to
your worst nightmare."

I really do love my mother, dearly. But this is an issue we
argue over again and again. Like Congress, I just don't think
she can see the finer points of the argument. And really, it's not
that complicated.

Burning the American flag is something I have never done,
and hopefully will never do. Frankly, I've got too much other crap
to do to just survive and try to enjoy life instead of burning
flags. When I see the American flag burning on television, it is
not a sight I particularly enjoy, although it has become so common
now, I am fairly immune to it. I have never thought of myself as
particularly patriotic. Sure, I pledged my allegiance to the flag
in elementary school, because I was young and that's what we did.
I stand up at baseball games and sing the National Anthem. I even
get teary-eyed sometimes. Certainly I do not equate this emotion,
this warmness in my heart with the evil, murderous government
of this country. Perhaps I am just fond of the idea of what America
could be. Perhaps I am dreaming of what the Founding Fathers
had in mind for the country. Perhaps I just love the vast and wonderful
geography of this beautiful country. Perhaps I am just grateful for
what freedoms we do have here. Perhaps I'm idealistic enough and naive
enough to believe that most people in this country are good. Although
the fact that Bush was voted President in the last election has convinced
me that there are a lot of stupid people in this country as well. Or
perhaps I should say, not completely informed. Narrow-minded?

The day that this government sees fit to pass an amendment to the
Constitution banning flag burning, I will go and buy an American flag,
stand in the street, and set it on fire.

Why? Not because I want to, and I certainly won't enjoy it. In fact
I will probably cry while doing it. And not because I am burning a piece
of material with stars and stripes on it. I will cry because one more
freedom will have been taken away from this country.

From the American Revolution, when men and women
died for freedom from king and crown, to World War II
when men and women died for freedom from the hideous
tyranny of Hitler and those who propped him up politically,
these two wars, as abhorrent as wars are, have been about just that:
FREEDOM.

Now I wish I could be as idealistic and peaceful as
Mr. Kilbey. I abhor war as much as he does, and wish to God
there'd never been one war on this planet. But the fact is, there
have been wars and sometimes diplomacy fails - sometimes
everything fails and men start brutally killing each other. It isn't right
and it isn't just, it just is. Indeed there are probably never any real
'just' wars - there has got to be corruption in
everything...perhaps, despite Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler
it was all going to go down the way it did anyway. I believe since the days
Homo sapien sapiens (oddly enough, we are called 'wise wise men')
learned to pick up a rock and throw it, and shoot a spear at something, there
were gonna be wars. It's the worst part of human nature, but it seems to
be human nature all the same. I believe the people fighting in the American
Revolution believed strongly they were fighting for their very lives, and
for freedom to live those lives the way they wanted to, and I believe
the "Greatest Generation" believed they were fighting for freedom from
the tyranny of madmen. Whether or not those wars were just, or right,
I cannot say. From a pacifist's standpoint, no. From a realist's standpoint, shit
happens, and so do wars. But back to the those folks in the American
Revolution and WWII who were no doubt fighting for what they believed to
be...

...Freedom to govern oneself, freedom to represent oneself fairly,
freedom to be oneself, whether Jew or German or Japanese.
The American flag is a SYMBOL of that freedom. It is NOT THE
FREEDOM ITSELF. The flag, in all its glory, is material, whether cotton
or nylon, natural or synthetic; it is colors and stars, it is matter
and atoms. It is NOT the IDEAL of FREEDOM, nor the IDEA of
FREEDOM that these men and women died for.

The American flag represents freedom - including the freedom
to burn the American flag. That is what thousands of young boys
died for on the beaches of Normandy. That is what the ideal of America
is about: FREEDOM. Freedom of expression, of ideas, of politics and
religion. I believe burning the American flag amounts to expression,
speech, even political statement. It is not a criminal act, nor should it
be treated as such.

What is Congress thinking? You cannot desecrate the ideal of freedom.
It remains, as long as you do not take it away from the people. That would
be the true desecration of the symbol of the flag.
I could burn a million American flags, and yet freedom will still reign.
If I cannot burn one flag, freedom has been taken away, and our country
is worse off for it.

Why is it so hard for some people to see what is essentially so simple?
Allowing me, and others, to choose to burn the American flag, if we so
desire, is to honour all those who fought, were injured and even died so
that we could RETAIN this freedom. These men and women did not die
so that the government could, little by little, start taking our freedoms
away from us.

I hope I never have to burn an American flag. But if I do,
I will see it as an act of freedom - the very freedom the flag
SYMBOLIZES. For you can desecrate and destroy matter and material,
but you cannot ever, ever, ever destroy the idea of freedom by
burning the very thing that symbolizes freedom.

You cannot destroy the idea of freedom, the symbol
of freedom, and that is what the flag ultimately is: an idea, a symbol.
The flag, in its symbolic nature, gives me the right to burn it.
Long live freedom, and my ability to express that freedom.

Photo: Old Glory, long may she keep freedom alive.