What Julian forgot to mention is that he hates America.
1: Sanchez sure doesn't sound like 'Murican name.
I'm going to a baseball game to celebrate Flag Day. Go Nats! The Rockies are flag-burnin commies!
TMY's favorite song to sing is currently "You're a grand old flag". She and a friend were singing it together the other day and they rendered line 4 as "You're the emperor of, the land I love".
What I've been wondering is why so many Democrats support this stupidity. The only thing I've come up with is inside-the-beltway-bubble, but that answer isn't entirely satisfying. Differential diagnosis?
3: It comes from Spain, actually.
6: Yglesias keeps saying it's quite popular.
6: Yglesias is pimping it as a fake issue not worth risking the house over. I really appreciate Sanchez sticking his neck out on this -- I don't think there's anything silly about freedom of speech.
People might come out against flag-burning when asked, but I think I've seen a poll that says no one actually cares about it. It's a really weak opinion for the vast majority of people.
The thing is that most flag burning is already illegal under local fire ordinances. The amendment focuses on the motivation and meaning of an action rather than just the action itself- and I thought conservatives were opposed to making crimes of thought (hate crimes) illegal.
Are there really people who vote Democratic but would change and vote Republican because of the flag-burning amendment? Or maybe Yglesias is worried about Republicans who are fed up with the establishment but just couldn't bring themselves to vote for a bunch of flag-burners? Either scenario seems unlikely.
I tend to agree with you, but I could imagine "Senator so-and-so wouldn't vote for the flag-burning amendment! Why does he hate America?" changing some votes too; I don't know anything about this stuff.
In a congressional election, there are anywhere from thousands to millions of votes cast. I'm sure "Senator so-and-so wouldn't vote for the flag-burning amendment! Why does he hate America?" will change a couple of votes. But so does what tie the candidates wear to a debate.
I'm against the flag-burning amendment not just because of the free speech reasons but because I don't trust the intention of the people trying to pass it. Amending the Constitution is (and should be) a big fucking deal. Adding a trivial, feel-good amendment is a disgrace to the process and makes it seem like changing one of our country's founding documents isn't that big of a deal, which I think opens the door to more amendments. I think it would be a lot easier to pass an amendment, say, outlawing abortion if there had been a number of amendments added in the preceding years. Call me a conspiracy theorist but I think there's something like this behind these amendments. That's why I'd rather wait for the political climate to change and for Democrats to take back the House and Senate before bringing up even amendments I think are good, like lifting the natural-born citizen requirement for being elected president.
16: I'm pretty sure I cited the amendments per decade stats the last time you said this. I think they're a strong counter argument.
Here's what I say: amend the Constitution for matters relating to the constitution of the country. Leave the trivial feel-good stuff to the legislature, because we all know Prohibition worked so well it made another! amendment.
17 - I know, I know. But I just don't trust these people. Also, back then I don't think you had the amendments being passed at the same time you had a bunch of people running around yelling about strict constructionism.
besides the free speech issue, and the triviality of it, the weird fetishism of the flag freaks me out a bit. Now would be a good time for a popular cartoonist to draw Congress prostrating itself before a giant golden flag.
The last time this debate came up, slolernr made a great point about flag-burning being a private property issue, not a speech issue. As in: "I bought this flag, now it's mine, and if I want to use it as a tea towel or as tinder, you can't tell me with to do with my property."
To counter which, I think that supporters of the amendment should argue for the nationalization of all flag-related resources.
like lifting the natural-born citizen requirement for being elected president.
I agree with you - especially about how flooding the system with proposed amendments makes it likelier that one will get through, which will make it easier for others, etc. - but I say leave the natural-born citizen thing alone until Ahnold is dead and in his grave.
It was the flag burning crap that finally tipped me over the edge with Hillary Clinton. I'm really, really close to the point where I flatly won't vote for any Democrat who supports this stupid bullshit. Even if they are supporting it out of blatant opportunistic hypocrisy, which I firmly believe is the case with HRC.
I once spent a pleasant afternoon going to hardware stores and purchasing a flag, a bottle of lighter fluid, and a box of strike anywhere matches, to see if I could get a rise out of people. (I think I got the idea from my friend Eric.)
I'm really, really close to the point where I flatly won't vote for any Democrat who supports this stupid bullshit.
I'm with you, there.
In a primary, or in a general election?
Right now, in a primary, but I'm edging really close to a general election. If the Democrats nominate Hillary Clinton, I would have to give really serious consideration to voting third party for the first time in my life. Enough is enough.
I sympathize with the impulse, but if it happens I'll be talking you in off the ledge. Don't do it.
McCain vs. Hillary? I believe in not voting, you know.
If you start acting like those damn Naderite leftier-than-thou idiots, I won't be talking you off the ledge. I'll be getting up there and kicking your fucking ass into the voting booth.
ha! I vote by mail!
Anyway, the reason I wouldn't vote for Hillary is that, seeing her perform so far, I'm not sure she would be a good choice in the long term. She'd be a better for policy than any repub I can think of, but she also might cause the dems to lose the next several elections. We've still got a long ways to go though, and maybe she'll improve, (or get buried early).
As someone who has spent my life expressing unupopular opinions, if you think I'm going to vote for anybody who proposes criminalizing political speech, you're nuts. This isn't Naderism, it's insisting that our leaders honor the First Amendment.
LB, B: Would you vote for an anti-abortion Democratic presidential candidate? Because that's where I find myself right now.
In the primary? No. If the differences between the candidates were great enough otherwise -- Sen. Reid against Jeb Bush? Yes.
And, you know, I've wanted very badly to have an abortion. It made quite a significant difference in my life. I somehow don't think you, or very many other people, have ever needed to burn a flag.
I'm not saying that it's not an important principle, but it's not the only principle, and if it's the choice you have you vote for the lesser of two evils.
I'm strongly pro-choice, of course, but I recognize why people have difficulty with the position. But I am just baffled by the flag-burning thing, for all the reasons listed in this thread. So it's more trivial than abortion, but in another way it's more egregious. And I have a strong desire to not just let this pass. I suppose it would be more reasonable to just start calling congress-people and rant. Hell, I'll call Hillary's office, I suppose.
No, I have no desire to burn a flag, but we've already set up secret prisons, stripped American citizens of habeas corpus, etc. I'm really, really not willing to give up any more ground on this. If we end up with a pro-war, pro-flag-burning-amendment nominee, that might just be the last straw for me.
No more fake Democrats. Either be one or don't, but don't expect me to support you if you can't be one.
Also, if HRC is the nominee, she's going to get smoked on the level of McGovern or Mondale, so my vote won't make a whit's worth of difference.
I'll vote for Reid if he's the candidate. Because I do not think that his personal anti-abortion position will affect Democratic party policy, nor that he will push to make abortion illegal.
Hillary's anti-flag-burning stand, as you admitted upthread, is unlikely to affect party policy, nor is she likely to push to make flag-burning unconstitutional.
Comparing flag-burning to torture is, I'm sorry, kinda heinous. If the choice is between a candidate whose party will not rationalize torture and strip Americans of haebus corpus, but who will give lip-service to stupid shit about flag burning, vs. a candidate who *will* continue the torture and destruction of legal rights, and you opt not to vote out of some desire for moral purity, then you might as well be one of the folks who voted for Nader in 2000, I'm sorry, but it's true.
No, I have no desire to burn a flag, but we've already set up secret prisons, stripped American citizens of habeas corpus, etc.
This is really the thing for me. HRC has the dominant position in our party, and she has done precisely dick on all of this. Her machine apparatus has actually been obstructive on some of this. Fuck that. Yeah, I'd probably vote for her anyway, but it's a hell of a lot closer than it should be.
as you admitted upthread
Excuse me?
Comparing flag-burning to torture
I'm not comparing the two (and I didn't mention torture, I was talking about incarcerating people without recourse). I'm saying this is all part of a fascist mindset, and I'm increasingly convinced we're sliding down a slippery slope right toward openly fascist government. I'm not willing to give any more momentum to that slide, however little my effect may be.
Look, I've been very openly vocal about the importance of choosing the lesser of two evils, and starkly contemptuous of the Naderites. It's all in my archives. But no more complicity in creating a police state. Give in on this (and lose the election anyhow), and in the next election, you'll be debating what gets thrown overboard next. The Democrats have already become a center-right party. I'm not staying in it all the way 'til we reach Hard Right station.
Especially if they are just going to lose anyway.
You said, "Even if they are supporting it out of blatant opportunistic hypocrisy, which I firmly believe is the case with HRC." I translated that as, "I don't actually think that anti-flag burning is gonna be first on her presidential agenda," more or less.
Honestly, I can't believe there's more vitriol over flag-burning than I've ever seen you guys express over abortion. It's kind of upsetting.
I think that's just a last-straw reaction -- I wouldn't take it as more than that.
You know, IIRC, Harry Reid is personally, like Kerry, against abortion, but he stands against laws outlawing abortion - he believes it's a private choice, no?
What I meant was that I don't think she gives a rat's ass about flag burning, which makes it doubly offensive, because she fucking knows better. But since Congress decides what legislation gets made, it doesn't matter what priority it is for her, were she to get elected.
more vitriol over flag-burning than I've ever seen you guys express over abortion
That's not remotely true. And if a Democratic candidate were supporting a constitutional amendment to ban abortion, it would be even more heated.
45: Yes, exactly. Which makes it quite different.
He's got a 29% score on abortion votes from NARAL. He's not pushing a prolife amendment, but he's not voting our line.
It's a little more complicated than that.
Yeah, do you think Hillary's record is going to be all that bad on civil liberties? She's not trying to roll back the First Amendment, she's waving around a position on an individually unimportant hot-button issue, like, say, 'partial-birth' abortion. Not too far off Harry.
do you think Hillary's record is going to be all that bad on civil liberties?
No, because she'll lose.
Because you stayed home. You bastard!
You bastard!
That's a step up from pigfucker. This really is the Land of Opportunity.
do you think Hillary's record is going to be all that bad on civil liberties?
If push comes to shove, I think it will be. She's a product of the DLC machine, and I don't trust the DLC on this issue at all. I don't think she'll seek to destroy civil liberties; I just think she expend exactly zero effort defending them from attack.
This is basically the opposite of what makes McCain attractive to me--I don't agree with him on all that much, but he'll inevitably replace a lot of the Republican machine with his own people, and they are much less scary to me than the present guys.
Politically, I still hold a personal grudge against Hillary for the war. I was in an audience before the war where she talked about the information she'd received etc, and how the WMD case was very convincing. My BS detector had gone off over centrifuges etc, but I let her talk me in off that ledge. I didn't demonstrate. I didn't write letters. I let it happen (not that my voice was a tipping point or anything). And when I see her, I just get kind of cold. I didn't follow the president's leadership on this. I followed her's. Don't want to do that again, no matter how smart and basically civic minded/good hearted I think she is.
And that flagburning position is just silly. What I'm curious about in light of this discussion, is what you think of HC's abortion rhetoric, and the call to reduce the number of abortions by reducing unplanned pregnancies. I actually thought she was toying with the creation of a prochoice strawman (strawwoman?) to triangulate against, and that her tradeoff was an implicit/explicit promise to deliver on Plan B and Ru 486.
This isn't really relevant to me (as a non 'Murican, etc.) but Apostropher has a point.
Both sides of the Atlantic have seen a huge shift rightwards on the part of the political parties that have historically represented the centre and the left. At some point that has to stop. Everyone has to have their 'line in the sand' moment. This far and no further.
Drawing that line over civil liberties issues is as good a place to draw it as anywhere. The danger we have is that those on the left and the centre-left find themselves supporting ever more right-wing policies and parties because there's no alternative if the alternative is only something even more right-wing and illiberal.
Somewhere the centre and the left has to just say, 'Fuck this'.
On the other hand, I can also see BPhD's point -- if the price of our liberal principles is another 4 more years of those bastards then maybe we ought to just suck it up and vote for whoever is going to beat 'em.
The right really has the left and the centre over a barrel on this one.
24 -- Was this in Canton? And did you get anywhere with your attempts to educe a rise?
do you think Hillary's record is going to be all that bad on civil liberties?
Bill Clinton's record was pretty bad; as the glibertarians and even Henley like to point out, the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act laid the groundwork for a lot of Bush's abuses, and I think there are some other cases of Clinton doing a few times what Bush does wholesale. (Like this.) I haven't seen any reason to think that Hillary Clinton will be better.
This is not intended to be so much deducing Hillary's position from Bill's, btw, though there's a little of that (and I'm a little uncomfortable with doing that). But, no way can we count on Democrats to be good on this issue, and it'd be nice to have a candidate who's spoken out on this more. (Maybe Hillary has, I just don't know of it.)
Of course the possible candidate this cuts against most is Gore. Don't know what he's been saying on the issue.
And I would vote for and work for Hillary if she won the nomination. Ditto, per impossibile, for Lieberman. The Republicans are just intolerable.
Re 53: A dialouge:
Terrance: You're such a pigfucker apostropher!
Apostropher: What?! Why would you call me a pigfucker?!
Terrance: Well, let's see...First of all, you fuck pigs.
Apostropher: Oh yeah!
As a side note, check out those interrobangs.
Democrats can ignore this and fret about the immature and distasteful grassroots --- or they can start giving their base a reason to vote for them. Mid-terms are about turn-out. Until rank and file Dems see that their party won't just excuse, enable and endorse GOP policies they have no reason to get off the couch.
Let's be clear about this: if we lose this fall, it will not be because the "war colored glasses" crowd was immature and failed to behave properly at the debutante ball. It will be because the Democratic establishment blew off its own voters in order to please David Broder and the stale DC punditocrisy --- the same thing they have been doing for more than a decade and losing.
Don't look at us. We're trying to get Democratic voters charged up about being Democrats again. [...] If we lose, it will be because the party establishment once more showed contempt for Democratic voters --- a fatal error the Republicans never ever make.
You know, that's absolutely right as a criticism of Democrats who pull stupid shit like supporting flag burning amendments, and it's absolutely right as a prediction of what the electorate is unfortunately likely to do. That still doesn't make staying home or voting in a third party just to show them a good idea. Every time the Republicans win, the political possibilities shift a little further right. And every time the Democrats win, even if they pull stupid shit like this, the possibilities shift a little further left.
They aren't great options, but they're the ones we have.