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Two Acts of Free Speech
A bit over a week ago, some pupils at Valdosta State University engaged in a protest centered on walking and stomping on the US flag — a flag Americans have been maimed and have died defending, a flag symbolizing the very freedom of speech that allows protesters to desecrate the flag as part of their protest.
Yes, desecrating our flag is a despicable act, but that’s what gives power to a protest of this sort. The act is an expression of political speech, and it is legitimately protected as such.
Then, after the protest had made its point, Air Force veteran Michelle Manhart entered the protest and took the flag away from the protesters. Although her act was more impromptu and less carefully planned, it was—and is—no less an act of free speech. Her protest, also centering on the desecration of our flag, was to defend the flag against that desecration.
Valdosta reacted to the exchange by punishing Manhart (and excusing the other protesters): she’s banned from school property and events.
My questions to Dr William McKinney, Valdosta President, and to Dr Hudson Rogers, Valdosta Provost and Acting Vice President for Student Affairs (and to others interested), are these:
On what basis do you place more value on one act of free speech than on another?
On what basis do you consider one act of free speech blameless and another act worthy of punishment?
What boundary do you use to permit one man’s unfettered free speech while limiting another’s?
Published in General
If you own a flag you are entitled to do what you want with it. If you don’t own a particular flag, you are not allowed to take it from the people who do, even if you view it as a flag rescue. I find flag desecration offensive, but many college students find pro-life displays offensive and try to tear them down. I would suggest that people should put on the displays they want. Critics can judge them accordingly, but not steal or vandalize what is not theirs.
I am a firm believer that our culture gets a vote. Property law is one thing, and moral suasion is another. Hippies’ rights to desecrate things is not the only aspect of our culture that veterans defend. Sometimes, youth berating an old lady just need a good old-fashioned beating. Sometimes, you just gotta go in there and grab the flag.
Good job, Manhart.
Marnart initiated the use of force. Force is not speech.
Defend your culture or lose it. A childish reliance upon definitions will see you defining in the camps.
Greatest play ever made by a Cub:
If disrespecting the flag is freedom of speech (and it is) so is preventing that disrespect.
EDIT: it just occurred to me that that was 39 years ago today.
The reports I read said the flag was private property and Manhart was attempting to take it…
Those who wish to lash themselves to the mast may take heart that there are federal laws prescribing the proper handling of the flag. Manhart intervened, stopping a bunch of lawless perpetrators in their tracks.
Are our libertarian friends above the law? Their unworkable socio-legal schemes are the twin of communism in that they are fit for discussion around the duck pond at most moderate-sized public universities. But soon real life intrudes, and it’s time to go back to class.
Step on a flag while I’m around and I’ll knock you out.
Manhart is better off without that alleged institution of higher learning. It is worse off without her.
Is there no longer anything sacred? If we cannot draw the line by protecting the flag that has draped the coffins of hundreds of thousands of American heroes then free speech (actually an obscene gesture) now trumps all human rights. Sad that even the most trivial exception to American policy, past or present, gives license to desecrate a symbol so dear to patriotic Americans. We have journeyed so far down this road towards rights without responsibility that we continue only at our own peril.
I thought that was kind of the obvious answer too.
By the way, I’ve always thought flag desecration as an act of protest kind of honored the flag. Here’s my thinking — the flag is a symbol, it’s not a graven idol. It is sacred not for its corporeal form but for what it symbolizes, and what it symbolizes (to me at least) is our national commitment to liberty and the sacrifices that have been made in service of that commitment. To desecrate the flag as an act of that protected liberty gives honor — even if unintentionally — to what the flag stands for.
Why do I think I’m going to get it for saying that?
You do know that’s false, don’t you? The perpetrators had a constitutional right to violate the flag handling prescriptions.
The line that I draw is relative to Manhart’s actions. Valdosta’s pupils, faculty, and staff seem to be saying that free speech means freedom to recite from the Left’s Holy Writ. But when Manhart engaged in her own act of political speech, her intervention and protection of the flag–after the flag-stompers had spoken and had their point–was shut down, and she was punished for her effrontery.
Some political speech, it appears, is to be freer than other free speech.
I haven’t learned whether Friday’s counterprotest was mostly by denizons of Valdosta, townies, outsiders, or some combination of the three; perhaps I’m painting the school with an unfairly broad brush. I do note, though, that the school administrators attempted to hype tensions by closing the school when they learned of the planned counterprotest–the administrators feared for the safety of the pupils and faculty. In the event, it was an emotional thing, but entirely peaceful–the attempt at manufacturing tension wasn’t successful.
Eric Hines
You do know that Manhart had, and has, an equal right to speak politically by intervening and protecting the flag, do you not?
Eric Hines
I’m no flag waver – literally – but a flag isn’t private property the same way a bedsheet is. Kind of a strange time for a university to start developing a sense of honor for private property. What’s next? Are they going to say a cake business is private property?
Cato, it’s not false, although the law is regarded as advisory due to a tradition of non-enforcement, and safely avoids being laid aside entirely by th Supreme Court decision you are probably linking to.
Note I avoided the words crime and criminal, did not get into the weeds on civil vs criminal and so forth. I am standing where I intend to stand. I realize that the government will not come to my relief, so I will defend this spot without relying upon them.
My point is that the bit-pickiest have more to consider than the single legal principle they have chosen to use as a lens, that of property rights.
As we have seen, it serves no useful end to primly honor the laws that restrain us from defending the culture while those laws are thrashed out of existence by progressive termites whose actions are soon sanctified. This is how we lost everything.
If you’re making a legal claim, and assuming it was the protestor’s flag, you’re dead wrong, and it’s not close.
If a person is deeply offended by someone else’s exercise of free speech, they can abscond with materials used by the offenders? So if some Native Americans activists who are offended by the Thanksgiving holiday decide to steal some parade floats from a Thanksgiving Day parade, I guess that’s cool since they’re just making a political statement, albeit with someone else’s property. If someone hates guns, it is apparently their right to vandalize booths at a gun show. Maybe if a book store is selling books we find offensive, it’s OK to go steal and destroy them. Do you want to live in a country where people can freely express unpopular opinions or don’t you?
“Do you want to live in a country where people can freely express unpopular opinions or don’t you?”
—
Randy, that choice is no longer on the table.
I am absolutely with Randy and several others on this. Private property is private property.
But I strongly suspect Valdosta State University is not with Randy on this. Reticulator clarifies that brilliantly a few comments up with one simple rhetorical question:
Reticulator: “Kind of a strange time for a university to start developing a sense of honor for private property. What’s next? Are they going to say a cake business is private property?”
… this is the first I’ve ever heard of Valdosta State University. I will say that I’ve got less and less respect for our colleges and universities (not sure I ever had any for our public schools) as time goes on. I hope they act as outrageously as possible in order to help facilitate school choice and a growth of more sane, less liberal, institutions with the respect they deserve – while these ridiculous old liberal institutions (not necessarily valdosta, which, as I said, I’ve never heard of) start to be seen as the joke that they are.
The unsaid second act of free speech would have been burning the Mexican flag or a photo of our dear leader.
This situation has turned worse, with the organizer of the protester claiming he is a terrorist and believed to be armed and dangerous, and the university was shut down Friday amid more protests. Here is the WaPo article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2015/04/24/georgia-campus-closed-in-debate-over-racism-patriotism-free-speech-terrorism/
Actions done for a symbolic purpose have a speech element, but they are not merely speech.
I agree with the sentiments of those want to protect the flag in this kind of case, but they must know that by interfering with private property, i.e., someone else’s flag, they are committing a crime, as well as a tort.
It’s defensible to commit the crime if you are also willing to do the time. I applaud Ms. Manhart for her patriotic action, and I also applaud the university for protecting the property of its protesting students, whom I deplore.
My respect for Ms. Manhart would increase if she were willing, even anxious, to accept the punishment meted out to her for her defense of the flag. Maybe she is.
Maybe it’s time to re-read “Letter From a Birmingham Jail.”
The two acts are not comparable. Taking something away from someone is not just speech. And if the flag was theirs, she didn’t have any right to touch it. There’s no right to use someone else’s property in exercising your right to speech. You can sympathize with her and argue that the university was wrong, but it wasn’t hypocritical, because the two things were in no way equivalent.
Arguably, it was an attempt to interfere with speech she didn’t like. I can strongly sympathize with her — but to redefine that as simply another act of free speech is to tread on very dangerous ground, with very dangerous company.
According to the Air Force Times, Manhart was discharged from the Air Force after posing nude in Playboy… Since she still was in search of more fame and fortune, she worked for PETA in an “I’d Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur” ad campaign… but although she was naked in that photo shoot too, she carried two American flags to cover her boobs.
I am glad she has such respect for the flag and what it symbolizes.
Here’s a nice image of Staff Sgt. Manhart, who knows how to respect the flag:
Classy.
I think we’ve just entered “a pox on all their houses” territory. :)
In the Air Force, that’s just morning formation.
At least she’s not stomping on it, eh?