I never considered burning a flag in protest. But if this does become a law I will do it, but please let me explain. It is not out of disrespect for anyone who has served or disrespect for her people. Ironically making flag burning illegal betrays everything America is supposed to represent and thus making flag burning illegal symbolically burns the flag. It would simply be transferring such a gesture into material reality for the whole world to see. You can hate it, but you cross a line you can’t come back from when you make it illegal. It is a line crossed by every totalitarian or authoritarian regime in the past which doesn’t allow political dissent. I’m going to hate myself for doing it but it must be done. As Thomas Jefferson once said, “If a law is unjust, a man is not only right to disobey it, he is obligated to do so”. Thus it becomes an obligation, a moral obligation and a patriotic duty to burn the flag if burning the flag becomes illegal. 

But it is said, “If you show resent for the symbol that gives you those freedoms, then why should you keep the freedom?” The answer to this is simple. By making flag burning illegal political dissent can thereby be framed as hatred of freedom even though it the concise expression of freedom, and thus freedom of the individual in this regard is abolished. It masquerades as something which protects freedom but in actuality only protecting what is supposed to be a symbol of freedom. The American flag is not a symbol of freedom but of America- which embodies the good and the bad of Americanism. When tyranny becomes law the bad outweighs the good and it’s representation of freedom becomes false and thus irrelevant. The US flag may represent freedom in the hearts and minds of Americans. But for people in Latin America, Asia, the middle east, and other poor parts of the world the US flag represents imperialism and exploitation, the very opposite of freedom. If the US flag was a flag which solely embodied the virtue of liberty and had no correlation with and country or government it would be a different matter. Freedom is always the freedom of dissent. The minute you make dissent illegal you make freedom illegal. The only response to such an unjust law is to violate it openly and without hesitation.