Be Always sure

WE HAD THE ARGUMENT while living as roommates in a trailor in the colorado mountains, which, looking back on it, seems appropiate. Younger,wilder days. The subject was the american flag, and whether it should be illegal to burn it.

My friend and roommate took the part of the staunchly patriotic conservative, insisting that not only should flag burning be illegal, there should be a constitutional amendment against it.

My case was simple: the right to burn the american flag is perhaps the most important right which the flag itself symbolizes. If it becomes illegal to burn it as an act of self expression, then the flag itself loses its strength, and stands for far less freedom than it was meant to.

Burn one american flag, and the rest of us will manufacture more copies, and fly them proudly. Burn an american flag, and the rest of us will ignore you, and fly our own flags proudly. Burn an american flag, and you have done nothing.

We almost got into a fight about it, but i was uninterested in resolving the question violently. that tells me my argument was stronger than his, or at least my self control. Twenty five years later, although I have only seen him a time or two since, we both probably maintain  the same attitude we did back then.

A couple years after that charming incident, I got into it with another friend, who wanted to use my dining room table as a place to paint anti war slogans on his copy of the flag during the first persian gulf war, (1991) which we were both protesting.

My argument at the time was; do what you want with your own property, but do not desicrate the flag on m property. He backed down, because I was definitaly right this time; not on my property.

I like the fact, looking back on it, that my positions in the two incidents seem contradictory, but aren't. Like Davy Crockett said, Be always sure you are tight, then go ahead.

Ah, the good old days, the days of youth, when we all think we have cornered the market on wisdom. Later, we learn better, we hope.