"We are the keepers of the flame of liberty"
Ronald Reagan, 1986
The growing threats to Americans’ constitutional rights are testing our courts, straining public trust, and fueling fears that the wealthy and powerful stand beyond any accountability.
Most recently, the Trump Administration has issued a decree to imprison anyone caught burning an American flag, with a justification being to label that citizen as attempting to ‘incite’.. something. What that something is hasn’t yet been fully expressed by the Administration.
The First Amendment of the Constitution states:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
In 1984, Gregory Lee Johnson burned an American flag outside of the convention center where the Republican National Convention was being held in Dallas, Texas. Several years later in 1989, the flag burning case ended with the landmark Supreme Court decision Texas v. Johnson, with the Court ruling in a 5–4 decision that burning the American flag is a form of protected "symbolic speech" under the First Amendment.
