Nutty Flag Amendment supporters get nuttier

So, yes­ter­day was appar­ently Flag Day. What­ever. _USA Today_ ran an Edi­to­r­ial about how a Flag Amend­ment (you know, the oft defeated attempt to crim­i­nal­ize the burn­ing of the US flag) was mis­guided, etc. But they also ran an “oppos­ing” edi­to­r­ial, by Randy “Duke” Cun­ning­ham (R-CA), the spon­sor of the lat­est Flag Amend­ment legislation.

You can read it here.

But let me point out the funniest/scariest part of his argument:

>“[Our Found­ing Fathers] rec­og­nized, as most Amer­i­cans do, that the free-speech rights of indi­vid­u­als must be con­sid­ered in rela­tion to the rights of all peo­ple, most of whom sup­port pro­tect­ing our national symbol.”

So, wait. So, indi­vid­ual free-speech rights must, in some cases, be abro­gated in favor of the “rights of all peo­ple?” So, if the major­ity of “all peo­ple” dis­agree with me about, say, who should be Pres­i­dent (need I remind us all that 51% is, in fact, a major­ity, just not much of one), I should not nec­es­sar­ily be allowed to point out that I think their choice is an evil mon­key? You know, because my point­ing that out impinges on their right to… feel good about winning?

Let me just point out, for those that think Mr. Cun­ning­ham makes a good case, that there is no room for argu­ment on this: the free-speech rights of indi­vid­u­als must be con­sid­ered more impor­tant than the free-speech rights of a major­ity, by sim­ple def­i­n­i­tion. If I can­not speak my mind (or burn the flag) because more peo­ple dis­agree with me than agree with me, then I do not have the right to free-speech. Instead, I have a total­i­tar­ian cen­sor­ship thrust upon me. Mr. Cunningham’s argu­ment is, by far, the most idi­otic and spe­cious peice of illog­i­cal gran­stand­ing I have heard in a long time. And this year has been impres­sively full of that.

How did the nutjobs get so bold?