Originally Posted by Penn
This ruling is the very essence of what we have all sworn to protect and defend with our lives.
What the ruling supports, is the fundamental right of free unrestricted speech, up to and including the destruction of our most cherished symbols. Justice Blackburn questions, as have others, how are we to distinguished what is more important between one representative object and another. Who establishes the value, and who has that right too impose the value on others, without first, negating the very essence of our rights protected by the 1st amendment.
In another thread someone remarked that the idea of being American was a mindset, and that idea is what made us unique. Being an American was a state of beliefs, enshrined in our Constitution as unalienable rights.
Being an American involves a level of consideration for cultural and religious differences that supersedes restriction. Being an American Soldier means swearing an oath of allegiance that supersedes our own prejudices in protecting those differences, even if those who most benefit from that oath, would never swear allegiance to it.
Some time ago, when the issue of burning the flag was causing severe emotional distress for many of us, I none the less, asked my state Senator, a WWII combat vet to vote against establishing the act as criminal for the same reason.
When we watch foreign protesters burn effigies and our National symbol, it disturbs us, not because we fear the loss of those emblems, but because it represents a threat to its representation, our ideals: Words, those which we willing defend and are prepared to die for, are more important that symbolic representations.
In that regard, false witness and false presentation are deeply embedded in our Judeo-Christian heritage, our culture. As such, when those ideals are trespassed upon, by a community or an individual, they are often ostracized and outcast from the very community they so desperately wanted to be a part of. Only in this way, is there any justice, for in any other manner we would contradict our commitment to the ideal of freedom and our core belief syatem.
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