Patriotism follow-up

As an aside to my last post I wanted to briefly touch on a related topic. I am a staunch believer in the rights granted to us by the Constitution. Nothing gets me going like a good free speech case such as the one the Supreme Court recently decided. This supreme court decision was a travesty, but I wanted to touch on a different topic; flag-burning.

As I mentioned before, the flag of the United States of America is an important symbol of our country, and even of the Constitution on which it was founded and which grants us rights such as free speech. This is why I feel it would be poetically wrong, a fiasco even, to ever ban flag burning.

See, when a flag is worn and no longer suitable for display, one proper way to dispose of it is to burn it. This is in the federal code dealing with proper display and care of the flag. So any law that forbids flag burning would have to differentiate between the proper, reverent type of flag burning used to dispose of worn flags, and any other type of flag burning, such as that done in protest of U.S. policy or actions.

The differentiating factor here is intent. Therefore, any law that bans flag-burning is outlawing intent, and is therefore a form of thought control.