Flag burning should be banned.

First of all, would you please provide a source for your "fact" that flag burning was originally done by enemy nations and is now done by terrorists? It is my belief that flag burning is usually done by protestors and was originally done, or at least popularized, by protestors against the Vietnam War. The sources I found (http://www.esquilax.com..., http://www.law.umkc.edu..., http://en.wikipedia.org...) confirm this, although they don't specifically say it hasn't been used bye enemies or terrorists. You keep repeating that flag burning has victims. WHO ARE THE VICTIMS? How does burning a flag hurt anyone? Yes, it might annoy people, even anger them, but it does not injure anyone enough to be a crime. Would you really be psychologically scarred from seeing someone burn a flag? Laws cannot protect everyone from everything, They exist to protect us from harm, not from being annoyed or upset shocked or angered. Flag burning does not hurt anyone. It DOES NOT have victims. You say that thinking so means that I am not a true Patriot. Besides for name-calling, do you have anything to support your position that there are victims of flag-burning??? You say that laws against flag-burning would protect the reputation of America. What reputation? Don't we want to keep the reputation of being a land of freedom and democracy? How does making laws restricting freedom do so? America is a great country. It is such a great country that it will not be harmed by people burning the flag. If you really believe that our country is so weak that that people burning flags is enough to harm it, maybe you're not a true patriot. In Texas v. Johnson, the Supreme Court held that flag burning is expression protected by the first amendment. Our Constitution, the document that embodies our laws and ideals, protects flag-burning. The Constitution is just as much a symbol of America as the flag is. You said that other methods of protest are just as effective as flag-burning, which is more likely to call negative attention to the protestors. Agreed. I am not advocating that people should burn flags. I am saying that people should be ALLOWED to burn flags. If they do, you don't have to like them. Nobody has to like them. But the law should not prevent them from doing so. And the truth is, people are far more likely to burn flags if flag-burning is made illegal. If it's legal to burn flags, flag-burning is not a very effective method of protest. But if it is banned, there will be a rush to burn flags to protest against the denial of our first amendment right to do so. By burning the flag, you are not burning our history. If someone burns a flag, they will not be burning every flag in the country. They will not be burning the original flags or flags of historical significance, and if they were, they could be prosecuted for destroying property, and a charge of flag-burning would not be necessary. If someone burns a flag, in all likelihood they will be burning some cheap flag that was probably made in a sweatshop in China. Yes, our flag stands for America, for, as the pledge of allegiance says, this one indivisible nation under God with liberty and justice for all. But when you burn a flag, you are not destroying America. You are not destroying the land, the government, the ideals, or the people. You are destroying a flag, a piece of cloth. You are destroying the symbol, not what it symbolizes. But when you pass laws restricting freedom, such as a law banning flag burning, you ARE destroying the country. The flag symbolizes our right to liberty, but liberty is not destroyed when you burn the flag, but when you deny people the right to express themselves by doing so. By banning flag-burning, you might physically save a piece of cloth from desecration, but in doing so you are desecrating the very values the flag stands for.