All well and good, except that the chosen excerpt says nothing of the sort.

Baron de Montesquieu says only that liberty and anarchy are not synonymous, not that all laws are just.

The question is not whether laws against flag burning can be legitimately passed, but instead, whether it's legitimate to pass laws against flag burning.

Or whether there is a point.

If the negative impact of passing a flag-burning law--more flag burning by far--exceeds the cost of leaving well enough alone (is there one?), why bother

"Liberty is a right of doing whatever the laws permit"

Jeff:

Law isn't utilitarian.

Which doesn't at all mean that liberty will expand if we outlaw flag-burning.

Liberty contracted when five unelected judges overthrew a legal scheme of long and uncontroversial duration. A society where that happens is precisely as arbitrary as the republicans warn against.

'The law in its majesty forbids the millionaire as well as the bum from sleeping under bridges.'

Anatole France

Precisely. Liberty doesn't require the millionaire to give the bum his house, but it does require they be equally punishable for like infractions.

I took the oath of office many times while in the military. It included the phrase "...defend and protect the Constitution of the United States ..."

I'm surprised that a religionist would get so wrought over a material objects.

One other thing to keep in mind: unless the flag burner is liable for other charges--vandalism, say--then the flag he burns is his own personal property.

Liberty does not lie in the government deciding how you may dispose of one particular piece of personal property. Because if you can justify a law against someone burning their own flag burning, you can justify one against Bible burning.

Many laws are utilitarian, and any law that suffers from as many flaws as this one should be burned.

Jeff:

It should be illegal to burn the Bible, just like a flag or the cross. Symbols matter.

Symbols matter, but that doesn't mean it should be illegal. After all, the Piss Christ was utterly offensive, even to dunnoist such as I. Going to ban that too? Do you advocate some sort of standing commission to evaluate everything for banning? The problem with your approach is that it is negative regulation, which means you will perepetually be faced with banning decisions.

Hard to reconcile that with liberty.

Consistent with other, utilitarian laws (like against open fires, or littering, for instance), there should never be any kind of law regarding disposal of personal property.

Oh, one other thing. If you had any faith in your God, you would let him deal with Bible burners. After all, it's His word, not yours.

Jeff:

No, not all. We don't need committees precisely because we have universal and long-standing laws banning exactly those things we think go to far. Or we do until a small elite make our justice system arbitrary and subvert liberty.

Their crime isn't against God but against their fellow citizens.

When I was younger, I used to take the Legion of Decency pledge every year.

I swore that I would not watch any movies that pederasts had decided were too racy.

And that's the problem with censorship. Nobody's good enough to censor anybody else.

I wouldn't presume to censor you.

By the way, if symbols matter, they must be equivalent to speech. Otherwise, how would we know what they signify?

No, they're more important than speech, which is why it's legitimate to protect them. Though a speech advocating overthrow of the Republic is not protected either.

If there was ever a case of the cure being far worse than the disease, this is it.

Never mind the pure oxygen of publicity, or the sure guarantee of a 1,000 fold increase flag burning, or that Censorship, the real name for this, is very addicting.

I would think the very last thing any lover of liberty would want is to put citizens in the habit of bargaining with government over what they may say, or how they are obliged to treat their private property.

Well, symbolic speech is usually more obscure than spoken speech, unless we're talking about Al Gore.

I don't know that flag-burning is a call for overthrow of the Republic. Maybe just overthrow of the Republicans.

They're still distinct, at least in my mind.

Jeff:

What bargain? It was illegal.

Harry:

Threats are illegal, no?

OJ:

My verb, your noun. There is a difference.

Making something as notoriously hard to define as what is allowed speech puts citizens continually in the position of bargaining over what separates legal from illegal.

That is not conducive to liberty, while burning flags harms liberty not in the least.

It's not very hard--48 states did it. It lasted for decades. Then five people changed it. That's a loss of liberty.

At least in this state, threats to people are illegal.

Complaining about institutions is still, last I heard, OK.

Jim Crow laws lasted for decades too, and it took the courts to overturn them.

More or less liberty?

How long something lasted, or how it was changed, doesn't have anything to do with whether there was more liberty before or after.

More. Liberty is not a function of the wisdom of the law. But by ceding power to the Court we've now allowed them to legalize the murder of 40 million fellow Americans. And so liberty was undermined.

We have now allowed the decision on life and abortion to be made by the woman, her family, clergy, and doctor.

As opposed to the government forcing a decision upon everyone.

That is an increase in liberty and, according to a recent poll, a position favored by 73% of Republicans and about 90% of Democrats. In other words, a vast majority of Americans.

Of course you don't like that. Unfortunately, that is the price of liberty--people being able to make their own choices even when you don't like it.

If you thought it was popular you'd allow legislatures to deal with it.