Defending the Truth

Sarge, I was fully aware of "1913" caveat. The precedent is how long A cross can stay there. I talked about the RELEVANT facts.
It's how long A SPECIFIC cross was there, as it is a SPECIFIC MONUMENT which can garner "historical value" and not just the general presence of some symbol.
By your line of logic, if a "building" was only 50 years old, but ANY building had stood in that spot for over 150 years, people could declare it a national landmark...
Surely you can see the error in that thinking.

And don't mix apples and oranges. Court rulings are not national monuments, and they are significantly different to the reasoning for the importance they invoke.

You never heard of this????? Don't you read the news? And you call me stupid and ignorant. You are really one funny guy. Here, get educated:

http://www.heartland.org/archives/en...00/seattle.htm

I don't generally try to argue that burning the flag is part of free speech. I guess the argument could be made that burning the flag is part of free speech, but that's not really what I'm trying to say. Banning flag burning is a poor idea because it denies people the free the freedom to use their property as they see fit without any good reason for doing so.

What you speak of here is symbolic. You fought for a set of ideals. You believe flags symbolize those ideals. And that is fine. Perhaps someone else believes that newspapers symbolize the ideals that he is willing to put his life on the line for. But that doesn't make it moral for that person to deny someone else's freedom to burn newspapers. What you feel the flag symbolizes is your belief. Don't use that belief to deny the freedom of others.

Remember that this is a fictional story. In a real crowd burning the flag, there may very well have been people willing to put their lives on the line to protect the freedom of burning the flag. I do not doubt that many people who serve in our military today do so to protect the freedom to burn the flag as much as any other freedom. I even said myself that I would give my life if it protected this freedom, and that remains true.

But let's imagine that people didn't have enough conviction to give their lives to protect this freedom. Does that mean they shouldn't be free? No, people deserve freedom whether they are willing to give their lives for it or not. It is wrong to take away people's freedom just because they don't want to die for it. There are lots of people who wouldn't kill themselves for freedom, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be free.

You are incorrect. Someone else burning the flag does not harm you one bit. You are not injured, your freedom is not denied, your property is not lessnened, and your persuit of happiness is not denied. You cannot call yourself harmed.

The most you could say is that your feelings are hurt, or a rewording of that which does not sound wimpy or whatever. But "hurting your feelings" is only a figure of speech, and it is not the same thing as hurting you. Your feelings are your business. Perhaps someone else's feelings are hurt by you voting or watching TV, or eating meat, or something like that. That's no justification for him to deny your freedom. These things are all intolerances of your freedoms. It's the same thing as someone who is intolerant toward Christianity. Maybe his feelings are hurt because people practice Christianity, but that is no justification for him to deny people's freedom to practice Christianity.

What you are suggesting is that flag burning harms you because you don't like flag burning. For that simple reason, you will ban it. But this implies that it's okay to ban freedoms simply because you don't like them. Someone doesn't like shouting? It's okay for him to ban it. Someone doesn't like people talking bad about conservatives? It's okay for him to ban it. It isn't okay to ban freedoms simply because you don't like them.

Freedoms should only be banned when it is absolutely necessary. Let people live their lives. If they want to burn a flag, that's their business. It is their lives and their property.

Would you really be happy if someone travelled to Fort Bragg and burned the flag? Would you say, "Ah, I see the strength of their conviction and now I am willing to keep flag burning legal." On the contrary, I am inclined to believe that you'd be pretty angry that someone had the nerve to do that, and you'd be even more ready to ban flag burning.

And I'd be pretty unhappy about that incident myself. A person is wrong to break into Fort Bragg and destroy property that is not his own, especially a piece of property that the owner likely treasures.

Perhaps my assumptions about how you would feel on this are wrong. But if so, it is really beyond me why you wish people would commit a crime and destroy someone else's property before you will grant them freedom.

I kind of think you're trying to determine whether a flag burner is someone who deserves freedom. Like, maybe you'd give them this freedom if they were courageous instead of cowards. But everyone deserves freedom. It does not matter whether they are cowardly or brave, weak or strong, or smart or foolish. They all deserve to be freedom. It isn't right to deny freedom simply because the people who use it are in some fashion annoying.

This isn't "the news".
This is a political activist web-site. Not a news web-site.

If this actually happened as described, then it's seriously wrong.
But don't you find it the least bit interesting that you have to go back SIX YEARS in order to find something like this?

Most liberal and conservative protests are peaceful.
Once again, you are stereo-typing and generalizing improperly.

Slam dunk on that one sarge.

All I can see is someone trying to spin their conclusion with gobblygook. No wonder I always get a headache trying to rationalize your points.

You really have a hangup with the time things happened. It doesn't matter when it happened. I was correct. I saw it and read about it when it happened and you were clueless. Give it up man.

Actually, it does if you're trying to claim that ALL LIBERALS need to be restricted based on ONE INCIDENT.

Get it?

You're cracking me up man. Liberals always do this shit at protests and such. Read my posts in the media threads about the liberal college professors threatening people and the one who threatened a bloogers child with sexual abuse. My you are naive.

"Always"?
Then why are you having to pull out an ISOLATED example that is SIX YEARS OLD???

You exaggerate and generalize improperly, as usual.


And should I toss out similar antics on the right?
Like Fred Phelps and Pat Robertson?
And then claim that their actions are what "conservatives always do"???

You take an ISOLATED FEW and exaggerate their actions onto the whole, and you refuse to see that...