Off Topic — HabitableZone

Off Topic » in reply to Incidentally, I see that a lot of people missed the point.

How about the "A man's home is his castle" point?
Mary Anne — (archived)

This was the first thing that occurred to me, which makes sense because it's an older legal principle than the Bill of Rights, as it's part of British common law. What gives someone else the right to post anything on my property without my permission?

So Joel Stein has a problem with flags. So what? It is, as they say, a free country. If he wants to express contempt for flags in general, which he does, how different is that from expressing contempt for people who express contempt for flags? He passes judgment, you pass judgment, it's all about not liking people for their taste. I have contempt for the taste of people who have those wooden lawn "ornaments" featuring fat butts (usually female) bent over in the garden showing their painted-on underwear. So I pass judgment too. It doesn't make me a bad person because I know what I don't like. It doesn't make the painted-underwear people bad people, but I wouldn't choose them to decorate a park. It doesn't make you a bad person for not liking Joel Stein because he dares to not like flag displays, even though you're wrong to extend your dislike to liberals in general (see your original post title). It doesn't make Joel Stein a bad person to dislike flag displays, but he's going to miss some very lovely textile art as a result. He, too, has missed the point -- of flag displays.

One of the premises of free speech is that you can make a statement for yourself, but you only speak for yourself. Making a statement for somebody else without his knowledge, let alone his permission, abridges his free speech. Making it with an artifact left on his property is indeed trespassing and littering.

Making it with a symbol that is so emotionally charged that people feel conflicted about removing it is just as reprehensible as it is clever.

If Mr. Stein had been a Jehovah's Witness instead of a Jew, the little "harmless" flag would have violated his religious beliefs and practices as well as his free speech. Did the patriotic advertizing maven think of that? Probably not. Her thought process didn't seem to go very far into considering how the recipients of her largess would feel. She wanted to get her message out, period. She has now gotten more publicity than she could have dreamed of. When will Mr. Stein receive his thank-you note?

Moral: If you want to wish your market a happy Fourth of July, send out a mass mailing of post cards. The card can have a flag on it, and people can still throw it away without hard feelings.

For the record, I would have had no problem pitching that particular flag in the trash. It became trash as soon as someone dumped it on property not their own. If I want to make a statement about my country using the flag, I'll do it myself.

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