What Everyone Missed At The Flag-Burning Circus

By Chris Rossini

Donald Trump has once again shown his mastery of dominating a news cycle. Today, the President-elect published an absurd tweet about jailing or revoking the citizenship of someone who burns a flag! Very predictably, the mainstream media jumped up like a pack of Pavlovian dogs and went all in on the story. 

America was thus destined for a day where right-wingers told us that Hillary supports the same thing as Trump, while lefties (hilariously) waxed poetic about "The Constitution." The Washington Post added to the circus by putting out the headline: "It's time to ban Trump from Twitter".

While the blind continue to lead the blind, one is hard-pressed in locating the peaceful libertarian stance on flag-burning. 

Fortunately, we have the eloquent words of the late Murray Rothbard in times like these:

Keeping our eye on property rights, the entire flag question is resolved easily and instantly. Everyone has the right to buy (or weave) and therefore own a piece of cloth in the shape and design of an American flag (or in any other design) and to do with it what he will: fly it, burn it, defile it, bury it, put it in the closet, wear it, etc. Flag laws are unjustifiable violations of the rights of private property...

On the other hand, no one has the right to come up and burn your flag, or someone else's. That should be illegal, not because a flag is being burned, but because the arsonist is burning your property without your permission. He is violating your property rights.

Note the way in which the focus on property rights solves all recondite issues.

Can it get any easier than liberty and private property?

Peace and the non-aggression principle are simple to comprehend. Live and let live. I keep my hands off of you and your stuff, and you keep your hands off me and my stuff.

No PhD's in "political science" required.

But alas, the ideas of power, violence, coercion and force continue to dominate.

That really needs to change.

(h/t Target Liberty)

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