I'll burn whatever piece of my property I desire.

Benjamin, the up and coming neocon propagandist, Shapiro has weighed in on the flag burning amendment. It's wrong to burn the flag. That is what I have gleamed from his wonderful piece. What I didn't find was any rational argument. But he did have time to drop this oxymoron into the debate.

In 1989, the Supreme Court suddenly decided that 200 years of legal interpretation were dead wrong. "The way to preserve the flag's special role is not to punish those who feel differently about these matters," wrote Justice Brennan. "It is to persuade them that they are wrong. We can imagine no more appropriate response to burning a flag than waving one's own, no better way to counter a flag burner's message than by saluting the flag that burns, no surer means of preserving the dignity even of the flag that burned than by – as one witness here did – according its remains a respectful burial."
This is idiocy, and dangerous idiocy at that. The American flag represents our nation; it represents American values; it represents the blood of those who have died and continue to die on battlefields across the world to protect our freedoms. The American flag does not represent the nonexistent right of traitors to desecrate the stars and bars. When the American flag is burned, it represents a denial of the most fundamental notion of citizenship. Those who burn the flag are no less traitors than those who renounce their citizenship to fight with our enemies. To state that burning the flag is a legitimate form of expression and that we should respond by waving a flag of our own, is to turn political debate from cogent argument to slogan-screaming.

Slogan-screaming? You must be really hurting for an argument. This is another case of what we are taught in schools nowadays. First you get a thesis, then you prove your thesis using selected quotes and jumps in reasoning to arrive at thinking you have proved your thesis. Truth isn't a considered issue.

We are told that to deny such common ground is unimportant. "There are scarcely any instances across America where people are burning the flag. And yet, now we want to set aside the important business of the Senate, health care and energy policy and education, and debate for an entire week this concept of amending our Bill of Rights," says Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill.
Protecting those who urinate, defecate, burn or stomp on our flag is not noble. Protecting our flag from such animals is not unimportant. Our flag is not merely a piece of cloth. Burning the flag is not exercising free speech, but denying American nationhood. We disgrace our origins, our soldiers and ourselves by allowing flag desecration an honored place in the constitutional pantheon of rights.

No slogan-screaming here. Look at the quote in red immediately above. Neocons are just like the liberals; neither believes our rights are God-given and immutable. Our rights contingent on what we allow? The government of man is much higher than God's law in neocon circles. This is a piece of trash if ever one has been written. I can't believe he could have any sincerity with this argument. And for the sake of fairness, why is there no mention of property rights by Shapiro? Well, those are one of those rights we allow and are not given by God. Just ask Kelo. She'll tell ya.

And if you want to know why burning the flag is and should be legal, read this article by Murray Rothbard.