The Doggerel of Desecration

USA Today announced that on July 2016, seventeen protesters were arrested at a flag burning protest outside the Republican National Convention.  Almost immediately, the topic of flag burning became a hot-button issue with sides advocating flag burning as a form of free speech and others against flag burning as it is disrespectful towards a symbol of the United States.

Allow me to establish a brief timeline of the history of flag desecration. By 1932, the adoption of state flag desecration statutes was implemented by all states. Essentially, this was a flag protection movement which was established to prevent commercial and political misuse of the flag.

These laws prevented citizens from placing any kind of marking on the flag and using the flag in advertising. In these establishments, the flag was also protected from defiance, public mutilating, trampling, defacing, defiling and contempt either by words or by an act.

Several cases of flag desecration were taken to court since then, most of which fell in favor of the defendants. Such cases include but are not limited to Halter v. Nebraska, West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette and Stromberg v. California. What all the cases had in common was a disregard to what would be considered the established flag desecration restrictions.

It was not until 1989, however, when the most famous case regarding flag desecration took place. Texas v. Johnson, making history as the first time the Supreme Court had directly applied the First Amendment to flag burning, had ruled it unconstitutional to make it a crime to desecrate the flag as a form of free speech.


(right: Johnson, left: attorney)

The American flag is a symbol of liberty, freedom, and human rights. This is why I almost find it laughably ironic that Gregory Johnson, a Revolutionary Communist Representative, was relieved from prison after setting fire to the flag outside the Republican National Convention in Dallas on account of flag desecration being ruled "symbolic speech". It is painfully paradoxical that Johnson and other protesters chanted "America, the red, white, and blue, we spit on you!" The very fact that protesters have the freedom to dishonor the U.S. flag further illustrates what great liberty it represents. There is something agonizingly poetic about a symbol of freedom being defiled in the act of free choice itself.

Now, 27 years later, protesters stand outside the RNC chanting "five, six, seven, eight, America was never great!" The rioters continue to yell in protest as the flag goes up in flames. To all participants in that rally: America is so prominent in protecting human rights, in fact, that you have the right to informally complain about it.

The objective behind legalizing the desecration of the flag is for citizens to express themselves freely as long as no one is being harmed. In contradiction, almost every record of flag ruination, protesters have been violent, disturbing the peace and assaulting police officers. Are dissidents hiding behind the First Amendment to get away with more violent actions?  Whether it be aggression, derogatory speech or destruction, we the people should recognize that violence is less than ideal and there are more dignified ways to express our beautiful right to speech.



Former Texas Governor Rick Perry eloquently sums up flag desecration saying: "Sometimes, people have some pretty extraordinary ways in which they express their First Amendment right," he said. "That’s not one that I think is particularly thoughtful...Burning something down, whether it’s a flag, whether it’s a home, whether it’s a country, is a poor way to express yourself.”