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Burning your country's flag is usually roundly condemned as the most unpatriotic and despicable act you could ever do. Proposing laws banning flag burning or accusing your opponent of supporting flag burning is a sort of political superweapon that gets rolled out when things get pretty desperate.
What happens if you burn an American flag in the White House? That was a storyline on one of my favourite episodes of The West Wing. You can watch the main scene below:
Popular magicians Penn & Teller perform the flag burning trick regularly in their stage shows and were invited onto The West Wing to perform it during an episode of the show. You can watch them perform the same trick in their Las Vegas show here, including an demonstration of how it's done:
It would be nice to see the standard of social and political debate elevated to this level more often. Flag burning is such an inflammatory issue, and yet far less important in the scheme of things than public health or sending young men off to die in pointless wars. They say we get the governments we deserve. The hope for the future then must surely be in elevating the level of thought within society as a whole. I hope my blog will help in some small way.
Finally, it's worth mentioning that although there were several calls made over the last decade by prominent Australian politicians and public leaders to pass laws banning flag burning, they were always rejected by the Prime Minister. It's one of the few things I did actually admire our dear departed John Howard for.
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