Vandalizing U.S. Flag

Your insistence that any vandalism or desecration of the American flag represents some bellwether of national freedom (“Reason Wins a Round,” editorial, Oct. 23) is sheer fantasy. In an effort to prop up your uninformed opinion, you cite a so-called conservative spokesman, who earlier opined that the Bill of Rights protects speech, no matter how offensive.

Both of you are wrong. The Bill of Rights protects free speech, but certainly not unlimited speech. Further, those who would wrap themselves in constitutional broadcloth as protection against their libel, slander, riot, or advocacy of violent sedition have seldom found legal sanctuary in the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Neither are “fighting words” protected speech. To anyone who has ever walked along the quietly elegant rows of simple white markers at a veterans cemetery and contemplated the supreme sacrifice those honored dead gave for our flag, it is most assuredly “fighting words” when, in the name of “free speech,” that ensign of liberty is vandalized.

If such an atrocity does not heighten your sense of outrage enough to protect that precious symbol, feel free to crawl back underneath your constitutional theory, but do not expect any patriot to join you.

JAMES E. ROGAN, Glendale