Nov Election, Candidates Aside...

[gagged_Louise]

Flag burning strikes me as an American issue. I've never heard of anyone going to jail or even being fined, in the last forty years, for burning an Irish, Swedish, German or Italian flag - provided it was their own flag! People around might get irritated or angry or say "that was immature", but nowadays it's not seen as a sacrilege against the nation per se, no matter what the point of it was, and a step past the limits of civilized free expression. Legally it's a non-issue.

It's a political act, not a means of voting yourself out into the wilderness and asking to be taken to jail. This ultra-dramatic view of flag burning is something you stick to in America, a reflection of the prairie frontier mentality maybe?