Trump’s flag-burning order baits Democrats — but – Latest News
“If it were up to me,” Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia famously advised a group of college students in 2015, “I would put in jail every sandal-wearing, scruffy-bearded weirdo who burns the American flag. But I am not king.”
The late justice was referring to the bulk opinion in Texas v. Johnson, the 1989 resolution he joined that discovered flag desecration was constitutionally protected speech.
The case revolved round a lifelong commie weirdo named Gregory Lee Johnson, who was convicted of desecrating an American flag during an anti-Ronald Reagan protest outdoors the 1984 Republican National Convention in Dallas.
Johnson was sentenced to 1 12 months in jail beneath Texas law. The state argued that it had a compelling curiosity in preserving revered national symbols.
In his dissent, Chief Justice William Rehnquist argued that the flag was not merely an “’idea’ or ‘point of view’ competing for recognition in the marketplace of ideas” but a image that binds a nation’s people.
The majority, nonetheless — rightly, for my part — reasoned that the “bedrock principle” underlying the First Amendment is that the federal government could not prohibit the expression of an thought just because society finds it “offensive or disagreeable.”
The Supreme Court has long held that First Amendment protections lengthen to symbolic acts.
Which brings us to President Donald Trump’s signing this week of an government order directing the Justice Department to pursue felony penalties in opposition to those that desecrate an American flag.
“All over the world they burn the American flag,” Trump mentioned.
“The people in this country don’t want to see our American flag burned and spit on and by people that are, in many cases, paid agitators.”
Sorry, your free expression rights don’t hinge on whether or not you might be paid or whether or not you protest free of charge.
And the president has no say in how we categorical ourselves.
Around the world, together with in most European nations, the burning of flags is prohibited as a result of the law locations the reverence of the state above the rights of the person.
Not right here.
In fact, Trump’s government order solely asks Attorney General Pam Bondi to prosecute those that burn or desecrate the American flag in ways in which trigger “harm unrelated to expression, consistent with the First Amendment.”
Which is to say, Trump solely needs people to imagine he’s ignoring the Supreme Court. Or maybe he needs to relitigate the difficulty regardless of long-standing precedent.
Then again, I’m comparatively sure probably the most important objective of the manager order is to goad Democrats into self-defeating reactions because the midterm elections method.
On that entrance, Trump has a first rate likelihood of success: A number of weeks in the past, the president dispatched the National Guard to Washington, DC, persuading half the Democratic Party to go on TV and argue that crime charges weren’t actually a downside for average Americans.
No doubt, the president hopes the new government order will provoke progressive Democrats to champion the finer factors of burning Old Glory.
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It wouldn’t be stunning if Black Lives Matter, Antifa and pro-Hamas sorts take the bait. One yahoo desecrating a flag was already arrested in entrance of the White House on Monday.
Defending the ungrateful scum that burn flags is a daunting political place even on earnest principled grounds.
As the manager order factors out, it’s “uniquely offensive and provocative.”
And Democrats, who’ve spent years attempting to ban and curb “misinformation” and “disinformation,” together with creating an aborted Ministry of Truth, possess zero credibility as moral defenders of free expression.
In flip, many on the proper who’ve spent years rightfully angered by the Biden administration’s administrative and bureaucratic censorship will cheer the president’s edict.
These days, rising numbers of people are beneath the impression that how you get what you want doesn’t actually matter: Neutral ideas be damned.
It’s one thing of a trope (and I’ve in all probability used it previously myself) that in style speech doesn’t actually need safety.
That’s not precisely true: As we noticed during COVID-19, comparatively in style concepts are additionally beneath fire.
If it weren’t in style, it wouldn’t matter as a lot to these in energy.
Yet it is usually actually true that probably the most unpopular speech deserves the identical protections.
So yes, to some extent, Trump’s edict is a distraction — but many people appear to imagine presidents can unilaterally accomplish issues they aren’t empowered to do.
Like, as an illustration, banning protected speech.
David Harsanyi is a senior author on the Washington Examiner. X: @davidharsanyi
