It's worrying that he tweets that. It's like he doesn't have a clue about the first amendment or the rule of law. We elected him to be president, not to be a dictator.

So he's, essentially, ignorant about American civics. It's a shame that he's ignorant, and more of a shame that a person ignorant on that topic got elected. That said, the courts are supposed to limit the effect of such ignorance about how the system works, and about what our rights are.

If the courts start failing in that role, that will be cause for very serious concern.

> If the courts start failing in that role, that will be cause for very serious concern

Courts are mostly able to act after-the-fact of alleged violations; by the time they fail to do their job, it will be way too late to start being concerned.

True. But say somebody burns a flag on inauguration day (probable). Say Trump tweets that the person should be arrested (also probable). What happens? Does the person get arrested, or do the police know (and follow) the relevant court rulings?

If the person gets arrested, do they get prosecuted, or does the prosecutor know and follow the relevant court rulings?

If the person gets prosecuted, does it come to trial, or does the judge throw it out?

If it comes to trial, does the person get convicted, or does the judge or jury rule that this behavior is protected by the First Amendment?

At every step, the flag burner should be home free. If they wind up facing a year in jail or losing their citizenship, that is not just time to start being concerned - it's time to start thinking seriously about leaving the country. But I'm more optimistic than that. I think, however, that it will be interesting to see how far it goes before it's thrown out, to see exactly how broken things currently are...

Loss of citizenship? People of a certain age will remember Viktor Korchnoi playing Anatoli Karpov, and Korchnoi with the white flag of the stateless. That's what the sworn enemy, the arch-Satan would do to dissidents! The US, on the other hand, would be the empire of free speech and capitalism.

But under Trump there's no need to be a dissident, just burning the flag is enough. How lame is that?

Hillary co-sponsored an actual bill called the "the flag protection act".

The fact that the democrats and republicans produced such like minded candidates is the more worrying aspect.

The Flag Protection Act of 2005, the one cosponsored by Clinton, would have prohibited destroying the flag for the primary purpose of intimidation, inciting immediate violence, or terrorism.

While one can certainly argue that there is little merit in specially punishing that particular mechanism of achieving those unlawful ends, that clearly is not the same thing (or even a similar thing) to a general ban on flag burning.

Titles of laws are rarely accurate indications of their substance.

Except who decides what that intimidation, violence or terrorism is ? If you are burning it in public, it could easily be spun different ways. We know some police officers treat minorities differently, so the line gets blurry.

Does a white college educated young person burn the flag with no consequences, and everyone else gets hit with intimidation ?

These are great questions, but in the end they are ones that the left didn't bother to ask when they dropped a principled support of the first amendment for "hate speech" as intimidation, in particular on college campuses as enforced by the US Justice Department. Personally I am against criminalizing flag burning, but for the purpose of highlighting hypocrisy I would like to be the first conservative to cite Karl Popper to argue for it: tolerant societies have a right to be intolerant of intolerance. Burning the flag is hate speech and intimidation based on rejection of our shared American values, and shall be banned.

Anyone on the left who disagrees with this argument? Re-evaluate your own principles then, in a way that doesn't assume "my values are right and yours are wrong" in the context of a democratic republic.

I'm on the left, and I disagree with your argument - but then again, I disagree with hate speech laws in general.

Then again, why is burning the flag necessarily "hate speech". I would dare say that it's perfectly legitimate way to protest any abuses that are carried out presumably in the name of that flag - like, say, Gitmo or Patriot Act.

Why is anything "hate" speech?

Because sometimes speech really is intended to arouse unmotivated hate in the audience. I don't have a problem calling such speech "hate speech" - it's a perfectly accurate label. It's also subjective, insofar any emotion is subjective, which is why it doesn't have place in law.

The same people who would do so for an incitement to immediate violence, intimidation, or terrorism (which are generally illegal under other criminal laws alreadyn whether or not destroying a flag is involved): prosecutors, judges (trial and appellate), and juries.

Can these actors be unfair and express biases not in the text of the law? Sure. But that's more an argument for policies to address that problem than it is an argument against additional criminalization of a subset of a category of generally already-criminal acts. (And against which, I should add, there are plenty of other arguments.)

Or as the more common adage goes, "don't judge a book by its cover."

While still a bad bill, that is not quite the same thing. The Flag Protection Act made it criminal to burn the flag for the purpose of inciting violence. Not just randomly burning it. It's the same idea as yelling fire in a crowded theatre, or holding a rally telling people to go riot.

> The fact that the democrats and republicans produced such like minded candidates is the more worrying aspect.

Except they absolutely didn't.

Isn't fire the accepted way to retire an old flag? What's the penalty for allowing the flag to touch the ground?