Letter Of The Day: "It's Not The Burning That Desecrates The Flag"

July's barely started and I'm already finding great letters to the editor. This one is by Dan Heinz of Reno published in the Reno Gazette-Journal:

Yet again Congress is considering banning flag burning. Desecration of the flag is indeed a serious matter.

Lying to the American People to justify a war sullies the flag.

Accusing war critics of being un-patriotic is un-American and thus damages the flag.

Warrantless eavesdropping on American citizens degrades basic rights and soils the flag.

Torture of prisoners violates our basic moral values and thus degrades the flag.

Legislating narrow religious beliefs violates our principle of separation of church and state and therefore the flag.

Foreign policy that turns the American flag into an international symbol of ignorance, arrogance and self- righteousness is desecration at its worst.

However, burning the flag to symbolically cleanse it, after six years of being trampled in the muck, would clearly be an act of patriotism.