[Vision2020] Celebrate freedom, kick a flag--burner's ass!

[Tom Hansen]

Burning the flag, as despicable an act it may be, is protected by the first
amendment.

Reasons for burning the flag are numerous.  

Those Iranians who burn the flag today, as they did in 1979 (when American
Hostages were taken at our embassy in Tehran), do so as an act of defiance
against who they perceived to be the great infidel (the US).

The anti-war protestors who burned the flag during the mid- to late-sixties
did so as an act of defiance against what they perceived to be our
government's unethical participation in the Vietnam conflict.

There are a variety of other instances of flag burning, each possessing a
reason unique in and of itself.

So, you see, Arnold.  Burning the flag, as deplorable in my opinion as it
is, is simply making a statement, a statement very important to the person
burning the flag.

Arnold goes on to say:

"So yes, I think someone that burns a US Flag should be watched more
carefully . . . "

They were watched back then and (more than likely) are watched today.
Whether it was the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) on the UC
Berkeley campus in 1968 or the Weathermen in Columbus, Ohio in 1970, they
were being monitored by illegal wiretaps and unlawful searches of private
property conducted by the FBI.

Concerning the desecration of the GSA club flag here on the UI campus:  In
my opinion that was an act of ignorance committed against gay students of
the University of Idaho.  The issue that should have been addressed
immediately and without hesitation should not necessarily have been the act
of burning the flag as much as the statement behind that act.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho
UI '96

"Implicit in the term 'national defense' is the notion of defending those
values and ideas which set this Nation apart. . . . It would indeed be
ironic if, in the name of national defense, we would sanction the subversion
of . . . those liberties . . . which makes the defense of the Nation
worthwhile."

- Chief Justice Earl Warren (1967)