Connor,

The reason we place limitations on some speech - such as sexual harassment and racial slurs (your examples) - is because these kinds of speech quite obviously do harm to others. Burning a flag, on the other hand, just as clearly harms no one. That’s the difference. That’s why burning the flag should be protected under the First Amendment, while other more harmful forms of free speech should not. It’s pretty simple. I don’t mean to be dismissive, but frankly I’m a little surprised this significant difference hadn’t occurred to you.

Another point: Accusing the other side of failing to “show reverence and respect” for the flag is a very poor tact for winning this debate. If I’m not mistaken, there are only a handful of flag-burnings each year, which means that roughly 99.999999% of those who, unlike you, believe that flag-burning should remain legal are already respectful of the flag. Including myself. To suggest otherwise only debases your argument, making it both demeaning and simultaneously unconvincing.

OK, For a moment, let’s accept Stein’s (absurd) premise that burning a flag somehow injures patriots. I have some questions for Stein:

1. By the same logic, shouldn’t it be illegal to burn the constiution? Or a book of federal or state law?
2. Shouldn’t it be illegal to burn the Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Koran and/or “Dianetics” by L. Ron Hubbard?
3. Assuming that burning a paper flag is just as injurious as burning a cloth one, shouldn’t it be illegal to draw a flag on paper and then burn it?
4. If I draw my flag with only forty-nine stars (rather than fifty) and then burn it, should that be illegal, or not? What about a simple set of red and white lines, but without the blue field and stars? Is it illegal to burn that? How vaguely flag-like does something need to be in order to trigger the new law? Should it be illegal to burn a red-white-and-blue pepsi can?
5. If a used car salesman places an American flag in his ad, and the ad is inserted into my Sunday paper, am I breaking the law if I use the newspaper to start my July 4th barbecue?

Answers To All Questions: No. Flag-burning should obviously not be prohibited by law. It is precisely the kind of non-violent political speech that the Founding Fathers intended to protect when they wrote the First Amendment.

I’m glad to hear you and I are on the same side in the debate, but someone needs to point out to Stein the absurd logic of his position - and Orrin Hatch’s for that matter, who claimed on the Senate floor that this was the single most important issue that our Congress could possibly be debating at this moment. What poppycock.