We must stop defacing the Flag!!!!!

[Bluesplayer]

The Flag Amendment

Before we go wasting Congress's time and the resourses of 50 state legislatures over this Flag Amendment, let's enforce the laws about the flag that are already on the books.

http://www.usflag.org/uscode36.html

These laws include:
36 USC 176 d - "The flag should never be used as wearing apparel...."




36 USC 176 g - "The flag should never have placed upon it, nor on any part of it, nor attached to it any mark, insignia, letter, word, figure, design, picture, or drawing of any nature."



Here we have the President of the United States and the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff both defacing the American flag. They have the arrogance to believe that the flag is theirs to do with as they choose. It belongs to them; it represents them. It certainly doesn't represent those who disagree with them; how could it?

Conservatives have appropriated patriotism, the flag, the Pledge of Allegiance, faith, values, and loving their mothers as strictly Republican ideas. They are floating this phony flag amendment in a shallow, all-too-obvious attempt to pander to their "base."

Let's hear what the "base" has to say about the images of the federal crimes depicted above.

[stepnw1f]

1. How about Placing a Flag at a Gas Station?

That always pissed me off. Sell your shit without selling our flag.

[BrklynLiberal]

2. Hypocrites, as usual.When it serves their purpose, the facts don't matter

[lindisfarne]

3. And, flags are supposed to be disposed of by burning. (Irony there).

Anyone who throws away a flag, or a depiction there of (even if it's into the recycling) is defacing the flag as much as someone who burns the flag in protest.

I don't know how many ripped flags I've seen on flagpoles in front of people's houses, how many flags out in the rain, how many flags flown at night without illumination. All these people are defacing the flag as much as someone who burns it in protest.

[Journeyman]

5. When Bush père was in the White House. . .

I had a friend in a retirement community. She was about 85 then but as sharp as she'd been as a young girl. The elder Bush was pushing patriotism in those days, and a flag desecration amendment was the talk of the campaign trail. At a party in the commons area, the talk turned to the need to "protect" the flag and one of the other residents held up a newspaper, on the cover of which the President was preparing to cut a birthday cake -- a cake decorated as an American flag. "This man," said the paper waver, "he knows how to respect our flag."

Alice looked at him a moment, then calmly said, "Well, he may be against burning the flag. But what do you think that flag's going to look like tomorrow, after they all get done eating it today."

[shain from kane]

13. It's like a sacrament. Last Supper for the Nazis. n/t

[Bucky]

7. Sigh. You just don't *get* it, do you. Burning as disposing is respectful.

If you burn the flag as a way of disposing of it, then that is a respectful treatment of Ol' Glory and thus not an actual denigration of the American flag. People who burn the flag as a sign of protest may be carrying out the same physical act, but they have an entirely different intent in mind... political dissent. So the real difference is not what they do, but the thoughts they are thinking. So that's all the president is trying to prevent... people from thinking, you know, unpatriotic thoughts. Do you really want to live in a country where people are allowed to think unpatriotically? Who knows what those kind of thought crimes could lead to! I say, double plus bad, citizen, double plus bad!!

[lindisfarne]

9. Oh I get it. It's the same approach we follow in education: thinking is

NOT allowed.

[Bluesplayer]

11. Why do you hate freedom?

[Warren DeMontague]

12. What if you draw a picture of someone burning a flag?

What if you draw a picture of a flag, then burn that?

What if you think about a flag, then think about burning it?

What if you burn a picture of someone burning a flag? Wouldn't that be patriotic, in a double negative sort of sense?

[Warren DeMontague]

4. I see these ginkuses driving pickups with oversized tires & tattered flags

hanging off the back, getting filthy and shredded.

What the fuck is up with that? If we're gonna take a whizz on the Constitution, destroy the reality of free speech to allegedly protect the symbol which is supposed to represent it, then I want these chucklefucking yahoos arrested pronto.

[cynatnite]

6. Yes, the madness must stop...

[LaPera]

8. And how many times have you personally seen the flag "defaced" ?

It's just another in a series of republican non issues(that we will get all the way through to election day, to see what takes hold)...To help promote their do nothing congressional bullshit, its only for republicans to get re-elected, while obviously doing nothing.

The flag non issue is an easy emotion "getter" to get and receive some passion and getting a reaction and elected (when has it become a problem?) It's just the same old bullshit from the pugs every election to avoid the real issues..Whatever will take hold to avoid the state we are in...But Rove has something else up his sleeve and he will come up with some other bullshit, always has...The flag issue means what? Just another non issue for their smokescreens.

Happy to see you recognize the bullshit...

[Wilms]

10. On so many levels they defile Our Flag. n/t

[inthebrain]

14. Republicans stole this crap from the hippies

They used to wear the flag all the time. Just like their anti big government stances (stolen for liberals) they are stealing this.

Conservatives have always had a stick up their asses and I think that's what leads them to be so unoriginal.

[rasputin1952]

15. Get a load of these:

Here is site for the severely demented:

http://totalobscurity.typepad.com/flagorama/catalog.html


This is said to be "real":