Freedom of speech or hate crime?

26th March 2007

Ok so the below YouTube is all over the internet and many people are blogging about it. It’s not safe for work, nor should you watch it with kids around. For those who don’t want to click it, it’s a bunch of protesters in Portland, Oregon burning a US soldier in effigy, and desecrating the US flag. Link here if it doesn’t show. It ties into the recent poll on the page concerning “Freedom of Speech/expression”. Should acts like this YouTube be counted as freedom of speech or should they be against the law?

I’m of the opinion that this should not be freedom of speech, that effigys of our soldiers and our flag should be protected. Not because I want to limit anyones speech, but rather because they are symbolic of our nation and what it stands for. There are laws on the books in many states concerning hate speech/defamation/slander that prohibit what we can say so it’s not like we can say anything we want at any given time. There are rules and laws governing that as it stands now, why not add something that protects the very symbols of our nation? It’s something that spurs disagreements among even the staunchest conservatives so I wanted peoples viewpoints. Comments are open, and none will be deleted unless they are filled with vulgar language. Keep it clean and let me know your thoughts.My thoughts:

Personally, I think the acts should be illegal. Our flag is the worldwide symbol of America and what it stands for, recognizable in most corners of the world and equated to freedom, liberty, and justice. The American soldier is as much our protector as they are the protectors of freedom worldwide. They’ve saved Europe twice and are often the first on the scene during any disaster. To allow the symbols they’ve become to be desecrated is to, in my opinion, desecrate freedom, liberty, and everything that has been fought/cried out for/bleed for in our history. It’s illegal to scream out fire in a crowded theater for fear of public safety, to me there is no distinction between desecrating the flag and the theater. To allow the symbols of freedom to be so spit upon and destroyed weakens the character of this nation and threatens the bulwarks of western civilization. If we are not truly willing to defend the flag, are we truly worthy of it?

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This entry was posted on Monday, March 26th, 2007 at 1:53 pm and is filed under American Politics, moonbats. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

1 On March 26th, 2007, Kaveman’s Daily Feed of Informative Blogs » Freedom of speech or hate crime? said:

[...] Original post by Logan [...]

2 On March 27th, 2007, merlyworm said:

Burning a flag or burning someone in effigy IS speech. Colonists burned King George in effigy just before deciding to kick the brits out and become a nation. Making flag burning (or burning in effigy) illegal specifically is an erotion of the basic freedon of speech we cherish in this country.

Even suggesting making it illegal makes you look like the whining left talking about thier right to not be offended. Yes its offensive. Yes, I find it offensive. If I was at such a rally, I would likely end up in jail beating the hell out of the wanna-be hippies. But making this sort of thing illegal is completly against everything this country stands for. Period. Its speech. Period.

3 On March 27th, 2007, Logan said:

Speech, like many of our other “freedoms” is already restricted in some ways. By your own admission, this is speech that makes you want violence, just like many forms of hate speech. Hate speech is leglislated against for some of those same reasons. Yes you can make the case that it’s a slippery slope and when do we stop? However in this age of political correctness, where we hold some stupid things as sancrosanct why can’t we protect the symbols of our nation? Truly moral/ethical/valuable things in this nation are not protected and each one we let get spit upon weakens our nation step by step. I worry that with each symbol/piece of this countries history that slips away we lose a piece of ourselves that we can not easily reclaim. 40 years ago if someone tried what those weak ass punks in Portland (notice they wouldn’t even show their faces) did, they would of been lynched on the spot. Now we recoil in some shock but there is no response. Each generation is losing just a little more respect for what those clolors mean. At some point we need to stop that erosion or risk losing pieces of our national soul.