Glenn Greenwald reacts:Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag - if they do, there must be consequences - perhaps loss of citizenship or year in jail!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 29, 2016
This is simply deranged and might be his most unhinged tweet yet. https://t.co/RpuShhDyb2— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) November 29, 2016
As usual, Murray Rothbard got it right. He wrote in 1995:The most warped, dangerous part of his proposal is not banning flag-burning; many want that. It's *citizenship-stripping* as punishment. https://t.co/dRFfuxeE8n
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) November 29, 2016
Keeping our eye on property rights, the entire flag question is resolved easily and instantly. Everyone has the right to buy (or weave) and therefore own a piece of cloth in the shape and design of an American flag (or in any other design) and to do with it what he will: fly it, burn it, defile it, bury it, put it in the closet, wear it, etc. Flag laws are unjustifiable violations of the rights of private property. (Constitutionally, there are many clauses from which private property rights can be derived.) On the other hand, no one has the right to come up and burn your flag, or someone else's. That should be illegal, not because a flag is being burned, but because the arsonist is burning your property without your permission. He is violating your property rights. Note the way in which the focus on property rights solves all recondite issues. Perhaps conservatives, who proclaim themselves defenders of property rights, will be moved to reconsider their support of its invasion. On the other hand, perhaps liberals, scorners of property rights, might be moved to consider that cleaving to them may be the only way, in the long run, to insure freedom of speech and press.
-RW UPDATE
Trump should familiarize himself with Scalia's take on flag-burning. pic.twitter.com/Da3qutjCVg
— bitteranagram (@bitteranagram) November 29, 2016
Better the pride that resides
ReplyDeleteIn a citizen of the world
Than the pride that divides
When a colorful rag is unfurled
Rush - Territories from the 1985 album 'Power Windows'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvM387NJTYg
I have a very sick sense that we are about to be dragged back to the days shortly after 911 when New York City cops would arrest, and beat up their fellow citizens if they had the audacity to go to the bathroom during the National Anthem at a sporting event. The authoritarian imbeciles who worship the American flag have no knowledge of, and could care less that the American flag was derived from the British East India Company flag that was used from 1707 to 1801. Sadly there is no point in bring up this point to conservatives who are eternally on the lookout for a boot to look up to, and lick to a spit shine.
ReplyDeleteIn the Phoenix metropolitan area it is not unusual to see full size pickup trucks parading around town with one or more large American flags waving high above the bed of the truck as they make their pride in America known to the world at large. These brain dead flag waving zombies have heard Donald's dog whistle, and are waiting for him to unleash them from their last instincts of civility. Donald Trump is stealthily in the process of disemboweling the last remnants of the nonaggression principle, and engorging flag waving zombie lust for empire, no matter the cost.
If Trump ratchets this issue up much more, I may have to start burning the flag myself, just to flip him off.
ReplyDeleteHillary Clinton proposed a similar punishment for flag burning as Senator: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_Protection_Act_of_2005
ReplyDeleteGood possibility that Trump is just trolling.
Trump is trolling.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.infowars.com/trump-trolls-media-into-savaging-hillary-clinton/
I hope you're correct on this. (Thankfully I think you are.)
ReplyDelete