Last of the Great Free Speech Champions
I've known a few people who, for one reason or another, have burned the flag as a gesture of extreme, country-rebuking disgust. One was the owner of a left-leaning bookstore where I used to work; another, a friend from college, is a Reagan Republican. She set fire to Old Glory in protest of "little Elian's" return to Cuba. Even if it's all the bad things people say it is, does anyone really dispute that flag-burning is also, or can be, a form of political expression?
It's disappointing that Wesley Clark has come out in favor of desecrating the Constitution in order to prohibit a form of free speech, and it's even more dismaying to hear his rationale, which basically amounts to "I don't like it." Or, as his communications director put it, flag-burning is
a very, very, very particularized form of dissent that he simply can't abide...For the most part he is a very strong proponent of civil liberties.
...the ones that don't annoy him, that is.
Aides are describing Clark's statement on the issue, made at an American Legion post in New Hampshire, as a spur-of-the-moment "emotional response." That doesn't reassure me as much as I'd like; guy's already fighting the rep of being a loose cannon.
Two other Democratic candidates who have supported a ban on flag-burning are Dick Gephardt and Dennis Kucinich, though Kucinich has changed his stance.
8:42:50 PM 
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