BY ELIJAH LEON

The American flag represents liberty and equality for all: it represents our country. Recently in America, there have been protests about our President-elect Donald Trump. People are protesting this by burning the American flag. Many people are outraged about this and completely against this form of protest, but others believe that this is necessary to make a point. There is also the debate that people, as well as President-elect Donald Trump believe that flag burning should be criminalized, but that would mean that the First Amendment would not be completely true. Because of this, there is a huge split in this topic.

To people who are in the military and have previously gone to war to protect this country and fight for the American flag, this flag burning is outrageous and terrible. There are many people that fought for this country and for this flag and believe that the American flag should be respected at all times. I believe

that the flag is a symbol of the United States and the people who fought for this country and lost their lives fighting, so this flag should be shown respect. If you don’t like what is happening in America, you shouldn’t burn the American flag because you are disrespecting every person who has fought for this country. If you are protesting the President-elect, you shouldn’t take it out on the American flag because the flag represents a lot and has a lot of meaning to this country and the people in it. When you burn the flag, you are not helping the cause; I believe you are just hurting this country. People should use another form of protesting other than flag burning because it is not right.

Because of this, people want to implement a law against the flag burning, I don’t know if I can agree with this because it would hurt the First Amendment, but I do think that we should encourage people to not harm the flag. If you don’t like the flag, then don’t do anything to it because it holds a lot of meaning to many people. You shouldn’t harm the flag just because you are mad at what is happening right now because you are not doing anything but adding to the damage that you claim you’re trying to prevent. I believe that this flag burning needs to come to an end because it is not necessary to burn the American flag to show that you are against something.