I just submitted my first-ever letter to the editor:
In response to the letter "burning U.S. flag should be federal crime," I joined the military specifically to defend the First Amendment. To do my small part in ensuring that liberty remain a tempestuous sea and not a doldrums of silenced thought. I took this obligation freely knowing that free speech provokes, particulary when cultural symbol...s are involved. I've willingly signed away personal freedoms so my fellow Americans can shout to their heart's content--even shout at my uniform--assessing that protecting heated words carries fewer expenses than sweeping up charred stripes and buying handcuffs. Or hosing down protester's bloodstains.
To ban flag burning would put us on a slippery slope, at the bottom which muzzled compliance replaces discourse, the Constitution becomes just another piece of paper and the flag a mere length of cloth. A dreary place where perhaps we couldn't even mention the flag in print, let alone hold this debate. Ban flag burning? I'd rather be buried in uniform surrounded by the protest-fuelled ashes of a free flag than one that's carefully folded, padded and stored away under law and key.
Maj James D. Fielder, USAF
In response to the letter "burning U.S. flag should be federal crime," I joined the military specifically to defend the First Amendment. To do my small part in ensuring that liberty remain a tempestuous sea and not a doldrums of silenced thought. I took this obligation freely knowing that free speech provokes, particulary when cultural symbol...s are involved. I've willingly signed away personal freedoms so my fellow Americans can shout to their heart's content--even shout at my uniform--assessing that protecting heated words carries fewer expenses than sweeping up charred stripes and buying handcuffs. Or hosing down protester's bloodstains.
To ban flag burning would put us on a slippery slope, at the bottom which muzzled compliance replaces discourse, the Constitution becomes just another piece of paper and the flag a mere length of cloth. A dreary place where perhaps we couldn't even mention the flag in print, let alone hold this debate. Ban flag burning? I'd rather be buried in uniform surrounded by the protest-fuelled ashes of a free flag than one that's carefully folded, padded and stored away under law and key.
Maj James D. Fielder, USAF