flag-burning

[danohu]

palmer1984 just posted a meme that touches on flag-burning. I've always been bewildered by the (mainly American?) objection to burning flags. But if you accept that flag-burning is Bad and Wrong...

How do True Patriots care for their ageing flags? Are they stored indefinitely? Given heroic burial (cremation presumably isn't an option)? Is there a patch of desert somewhere, where old flags fly until they disintegrate completely?

The military are big on flags and big on rules; they must have some baroque procedure for getting rid of the old ones.

Also: I've only come across the obsession with flag-burning in an American context. Are there equally small-minded patriots in the UK and elsewhere?

Comments

[oedipamaas49.livejournal.com]

'particularly of the Muslim variety'

Interesting; I always imagine it in terms of the late '60s - Vietnam protesters and the like. Guess I'm behind the times.

I'll defer to your knowledge on whether it's a myth. I'd thought of the flag in the US as roughly equivalent to the monarchy in the UK: something of little practical importance that people enjoy defending or desecrating depending on their background.

[I also thought that any flag-burning law would have to be a constitutional amendment - so the supreme court would be irrelevant, but Congress would have to sniff a *lot* of glue]

fire starter

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, middle eastern demonstations seem to go in for it a fair bit. Whether that be the stars and streipes, danish flag, whatever.

New Labour mooted introducing a flag burning law over here a couple of years ago (when crusher Reed was home office dude) but it got quietly dropped. The one good thing about such a law is that flag burning would rocket... I've always wanted to burn a union jack - preferably in front of fascists - I hope one day I'll get my wish.

Jim http://jimjay.blogspot.com