A couple of quick thoughts.
Forget whatever the people behind this want to sell you. This is a very simple issue.
This is a partial repeal of the 1st amendment right to Freedom of Speech as afforded to us by the Constitution of the United States of America.
This is coming from the same people who claim that we should not be able to limit the amount of money that corporations give to political campaigns because that would be an infringement of the very same right.
In the US Code regulating the Flag of our country, it says that the only way to retire a flag is to respectfully burn it.
So, we now have a distinction between burning a flag as a means of retiring it from service under the regulation of federal law and burning a flag as a means of making an ideological statement.
The difference here is motive.
The same people pushing this amendment oppose hate crime legislation because it stiffens penalties based upon what a person's motive was.
Yet they are in favor of the Flag Burning Amendment.
This is a cheap ploy to create an issue to divide the country in time for the mid-term elections.
People will see through it. People will not stand for it.
The very idea that we would repeal the first amendment to gain some short term political ground is simply disgusting.
We have real problems in this country. We have real problems abroad. And the leadership of the Republican Party feels the need to waste their time, energy, and resources on this? This can be counted among THE LEAST PRESSING ISSUES in the history of the Senate.
And do you know why?
Because, despite what some will have you believe, there is no epidemic of flag burning going on.
And those of you out there who want to prove a point by showing these fascists that they can't tell you what to do, listen up.
The moment you burn one flag to just to show you can, they win.
Shout and Scream. Protest in the Street. Don't you burn a flag. The media will never stop playing the tape, and then the amendment will pass the state legislatures because of local politicians’ collective fear of paying a political price in the short term.
Don't be fooled. If this passes, the federal government will use it as evidence that political speech can be limited. Any form of speech the party in control wants to deem as anti-American and inflammatory will become a crime, pointing to the Flag Burning Amendment as the rational.
Don't let anyone get away with calling it anything other than a repeal of the first amendment.
Don't start burning flags to prove points.
Don't let anyone call you un-American for not supporting this.
This is "Gay Marriage" for the 2006 election cycle. Shut it down now.
-The Oklahoma Hippy
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