"Free" Speech the Flag Amendment and the Koran

I started off my day today stopping in at What is it Today (she's very good). There was a post on Orcinus that she pointed out that was about these "Liberal Hunting Permits". After 911 some person in an attempt to make money similar to the whole Bin Laden toilet paper ideas created "Terrorist Hunting Permits". Not to be outdone evidently a few have now come up with the idea of "Liberal Hunting Permits". It is of course supposed to be humor, sick humor but this is type of thing is protected under Free Speech. The incidents of people having to remove bumper stickers or signs because they are considered offensive has been pretty rare.

Some of you are probably wondering, okay now what does some silly bumper sticker have to do with the Flag Amendment or the Koran?

When the stories first came out about the Koran being defaced there were protests in other countries. People died. Newsweek was blamed. People here on the internet and in real life talked about how silly it was to place that much of a big deal over a book. That someone could burn our Bibles and it was no disrespect to the words contained within. It was only a symbol.....We talked about the laws in some of these countries and how silly, how backward, how un-civilized these people are to have laws that would have a death sentence for merely defacing a symbol. That here in our Country we have Free Speech. We can put stickers or signs or state basically what we want as long as we don't harm someone.

It's become pretty common on the media to see groups of anti-American protestors in other countries burning our flag. Why? Because it is a symbol. This amendment would of course not affect them because most of the flag burning incidents don't even happen on our soil.

I personally think that anyone that would sport one of those "Liberal Hunting Permit's" is a twit. I personally have never burned a flag or a bible or a koran nor do I intend to. I never even burned a bra during that whole era (okay it was because I didn't own one but still). I don't believe that type of protest gets the message in a way that facilitates change or action.

But if you want to burn the flag or the bible or the koran or any symbol? I certainly won't hand you a match, but I will remember a time in history when our own founding fathers wrote our Constitution and the Bill of Rights. I will remember how many died to give us the ability to have free speech, that it is not really free at all. It has been paid for in blood over and over again.