Only true patriots
protect the right to burn the American flag
My father was scheduled in a month, in what would be the first of three tours of duty, to be sent to Masirah Island off of the coast of Oman to fly combat missions into Iraq and Afghanistan.
Needless to say as a young child, I became enraged. My chest trembled with anger, tears coming to my eyes.
I looked to my father, expecting to see the same instinctual rage that was enveloping my thoughts, but instead I saw him smiling, not scoffing or smirking, but smiling contentedly, as if everything was as it should be. I asked him why, and it was then that he taught me one of the most important lessons about our country, one that I still hold close to my heart today.
He told me that there was only one thing that could make him more enraged than seeing his country’s flag burn, and that would be to watch the protesters who were burning the American flag being forced to stop.
I know many would do anything you could to stop an American flag from being burned. I know that many, upon seeing our flag being burned in protest, would feel the same feelings of anger and hatred as I did when I was a child.
But if you were to act on these base feelings, if you were to resort to violence to stop these protesters, I believe you would be dishonoring every U.S. soldier who has ever fought and died for our great country.
They paid the ultimate price, so that we could enjoy the freedoms and rights we enjoy today, including our freedom of speech. It is easy for us to succumb to those primal feelings of violence; any average person can grab a gun and start killing those who oppose his belief systems. We all want to stop our flag from being burned.
However, it is the truly great person who chooses not to fall victim to those violent feelings that would take away his fellow citizens’ freedom of speech.
If we choose to fall victims to our vengeful emotions, and stop people from protesting and burning our flag, then we will only blur the line between America and a country like North Korea, where the burning of their flag, or any form of protesting for that matter, is punishable by death.
If we outlaw the burning of our flag, and infringe upon that seemingly unimportant freedom of speech, I ask you America, where would it stop?
If you stamp out a burning flag against a protester’s will, you are trampling on the core ideals and values that our great country was founded on.
If you throw water on it, you are extinguishing that flame in all of us, that sacred flame that defines America as one of the greatest countries in the world.
If you refuse to tolerate the free speech of others, then how can you expect others to tolerate yours?
If you choose not to accept other’s freedom of speech, then you choose not to enjoy your own free speech.
The fact that a person can walk outside and burn the American flag is what I believe U.S. soldiers fight and die for.
I would never dare put words in the mouths of those great men and women who have died for this country, but I would like to think that if I died defending this great nation, and looked down on it and saw people protesting our government, and burning our flag, I could rest in peace knowing that my death was not in vain.
I would be proud that I gave my life for a nation that upheld its values, and, even when put to the test, refused to go against the very ideas upon which it was founded, the ideas that make it great.
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