Years ago, when I was working at the local community college, I was asked for a comment on the issue of flag burning.
Two young students were writing a paper in support of the right to burn the flag. They asked me what I thought and told me that they did not understand why people got so upset about it. Here's what I told them.
Flag burning, is, without a doubt, an example of the right to free speech. However, just because we have a right doesn't mean that we should excercise it, at least, not without thinking about it. To understand why flag burning generates such controversy, you have to understand the other side of the question.
Some people today were alive during the First World War, and there are many that were alive during the Second World War. To these people, the flag is more than just a piece of cloth.
During the Invasion of France in World War Two, for instance, on June 6th, 1944, these men came to the coast of France to attack Hitler's troops. They were riding in boats, crowded together and not wearing much more than we are today, except maybe a helmet and a jacket. They were approaching a beach that was littered with mines, covered by many machine guns and huge artillery guns, and speckled with obstacles to prevent them from getting there easily.
There were one hundred fifty six thousand men who came up on those beaches that day and by the time that they had secured a foothold, the ocean at that beach had literally turned red with their blood. Thousands never made it to dry land from their boat. They were stacked like driftwood at the waters edge, shot down by German machine guns. Many more had drowned by the weight of equipment they were carrying when their boats couldn't get close enough to let them off in shallow water.
Each one of the seventy three thousand Americans who started out that morning were there voluntarily, to fight for something that they believed in. When they died on that beach, many of them were 18, 19 or 20 years old, not much older than you today. They gave up all of their future hopes, all of the possibilities that they could have families, find happiness, succeed in their lives or give to the world some great idea or invention. They gave that all up in order to free people whom they never met, people who they did not know and never would know, and who would not know them. But they did it willingly, for freedom.
When they stormed that beach under the withering enemy fire and watched their friends fall dead into the ocean on the left and right of them, they went under that flag. When they died, they died under that flag. When they weren’t sure if they were succeeding or not, the presence of that flag going forward told them that their group was still fighting and still moving. When they did not know where to go in the heat of battle, that flag was their rallying point.
That flag carries with it all of the future hopes and dreams of all the people who have given their lives so that we could be free. It carries the lost possibilities inherent in every drop of blood spilled from the first shots fired on Lexington Green in 1775 on through to this very day. It also carries the guarantee that we can burn that flag as an expression of our opinions, and those men who died under that flag died for that right as well.
I believe that flag burning is protected as a form of free speech because that flag represents freedom and if we stifle our opinions and the ability to speak them, then the flag doesn’t mean anything, even if the right it represents is the right to destroy it. But, before you claim that right you need to understand what that flag represents and what people went through for it and make sure that the statement you are making by burning it is important enough to merit it.
In other words, you need to think about where your rights came from, because they were purchased at a terrible cost.