In this episode, we debate whether or not flag burning is a hate crime, and why President Trump's executive order banning all forms of flag burning was a good or bad move. We also discuss Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey's relationship, and the long history of American flag burning.
00:00:31.000He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.
00:00:37.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:01:03.000We have Jack, we have Blake, we have Tyler, a lot to cover.
00:01:07.000Of course, the biggest event in the history of Western civilization, the biggest event since the resurrection, Taylor Swift is now engaged to Travis Kelsey.
00:01:14.000We will get to that, obviously bigger than the American founding, the Emancipation Proclamation, storming Normandy Beach, and honestly, the biggest thing ever.
00:01:23.000So instead, what we're going to do is we're going to debate flag burning.
00:01:28.000From what I understand, President Trump signed an executive order saying that flag burning shall be illegal based on the laws.
00:01:36.000Jack, why don't you go through just the facts of it and then state your position?
00:01:40.000Because Jack, you've been really going all in on this.
00:01:44.000So the flag burning EO, the way that it's been reported on has been, you know, sort of, I would say sort of facetious and deceptive because what's really interesting about the flag burning EO is it's actually an executive order about the protection of the American flag, but it cites, for example, the Supreme Court ruling.
00:02:07.000essentially of protecting the flag burning act itself, which goes all the way back to the storied American founding years of 1989.
00:02:16.000So really a longstanding American tradition of the protection of flag burning.
00:02:22.000And what the EO actually does is it allows for the prosecution of people who burn the flag with intent to incite or if there is imminent criminal action associated with the burning of the American flag and then also prioritizes that if you are say burning a flag outside the White House in a public park,
00:02:46.000which happened I think the day of or the day after this EO was signed in Lafayette Square Park right there in on the north side of the White House where there was a guy who set it on fire.
00:02:56.000And in fact, he was charged, but he was charged with setting a fire in a public park.
00:03:01.000So the interesting thing about this EO is it doesn't actually ban the burning of flags.
00:03:11.000an intent to incite imminent violence.
00:03:14.000So it's really covering this, you know, public areas, these riots.
00:03:17.000They talk about the LA riots in the EO and the fact there were, you know, foreign nationals burning our flag in our own cities and no one was even arresting them or doing anything about this.
00:03:28.000And the fact of the matter that we should protect the flag based on the basis that national origin is in fact a protected class in this country under existing law.
00:03:40.000And American national origin is an example of that.
00:03:43.000Therefore, you know, using the language of the left, basically, when they say it's a hate crime to burn say a trans flag or a pride flag and while they're saying that burning the American flag is an act of hate against people who are from America which is exactly true and so the EO itself just to summarize doesn't actually ban flag burning I would go a step further though personally and say that yes we should ban flag burning and it's completely constitutional Blake your reply dive into it the
00:04:14.000messier the better Yeah, yeah, so he is correct.
00:04:17.000The constitutional precedent that you can't ban flag burning is relatively recent.
00:04:26.000I will note Justice Anton and Scalia was in the majority on that case.
00:04:32.000It actually is a little unusual because Scalia was in the majority and then like the main dissent was from Justice John Paul Stevens who was a left-wing member of the court but had a very strong opinion that actually banning flag burning was completely fine for basically powerful symbolic reasons.
00:04:50.000I think he was the oldest guy on the court and he just had very strong feelings about the flag and so I can understand how that does inspire strong feelings from people.
00:05:00.000My take, I'm basically, I'm a free speech absolutist.
00:05:04.000think uh the vast majority of things that can be interpreted as speech should be allowed to be interpreted as speech and we should not go around saying that means of expressing yourself are uh
00:05:32.000Or in the U.K. right now, there's a guy who burned a Quran outside an embassy.
00:05:39.000I think there was even someone somewhere burned a Quran and got stabbed.
00:05:43.000And then they were basically indicted for inciting a stabbing of themselves.
00:05:48.000I can't remember where that was though.
00:05:50.000And like that's the direction we're headed is like if we're going to have it be okay to ban like symbolic gestures, we're headed in the direction where the symbols, what we're going to ban is blasphemy.
00:06:02.000And what can you blaspheme against in the 21st century?
00:06:10.000You can blaspheme against a lot of like modern dogmas that are themselves quite new.
00:06:16.000And I would say in modern America, our best defense against that is very, very strong, robust free speech laws across the board.
00:06:26.000And frankly, I think it was a triumph.
00:06:28.000I think America was at a great peak when our attitude of free speech was basically anything goes.
00:06:35.000And yeah, that wasn't always the case.
00:06:37.000But I think that is a case where the wider and wider our free speech protections got, the better America was actually getting as a country.
00:06:45.000Because yeah, we weren't always super robust on it.
00:06:47.000I mean, before the Civil War, you had a lot of restrictions on speech related to slavery and such.
00:07:16.000So real quick, one thing that Jack brought up that I thought was really interesting is someone made the point that, uh, you know, burning a flag with this new EO in front of federal employee is part of that whole incitement act.
00:07:30.000I just heard someone talking about that, I think yesterday, which I think is really, you know, really moving because I I generally agree with Blake that, you know, let people do whatever they want to do.
00:07:43.000But that whole concept of people that are mentally ill using the flag to try to invoke some kind of violence or incite some kind of violence is generally kind of the MO that we've seen from these people.
00:07:59.000So like going in front of the White House and lighting stuff on fire is probably not, you know, all mentally there and probably not good for society.
00:08:06.000And I think that's that's part of the conversation.
00:08:08.000And so, you know, I've been kind of more pulled towards, hey, you know, most of the people who are doing these acts are actually going and like putting people in danger.
00:08:19.000employees, people who are, you know, just trying to do their job on a daily basis.
00:08:24.000They're showing up, you know, actually violently and loudly saying how much they hate America going in front of America.
00:08:32.000So I've been kind of more pulled towards that side of things, which is like, yeah, we shouldn't, this is probably not healthy for society to allow this to go on, especially when it puts people in harm's way.
00:08:42.000Well, but I think that's exactly the area that we're showing.
00:08:45.000Like, is just going to add that there's a go ahead.
00:08:50.000And before I, before I, you know, respond to Blake's, uh, facile, libertarian, uh, argument that, um, it's.
00:08:56.000it that area where we're showing those images um that's a tourist area it's one of the most high traffic tourist areas in washington dc um i've i've had my kids in that area for like like multiple times just in the last couple of weeks so i mean people are coming there to set things on fire plus not only that i mean we've we've also seen in washington dc and New York, people setting themselves on fire as forms of protest.
00:09:20.000So it definitely leads to that type of Aaron Bushnell, I think was in New York.
00:09:25.000And there was another guy who set himself on fire in D.C. It didn't get as much coverage because I don't think it was on video.
00:09:30.000But, you know, there's obvious harm to others or, you know, potential for harm.
00:09:36.000You can't just go around setting fires in cities to begin with?
00:09:40.000Well, first of all, it's obviously a good thing if it inspires left-wingers to set themselves on fire.
00:09:45.000But in addition, no, I think what the objection that Tyler brought up actually gets exactly at how rapidly and immediately this starts escalating, where, okay, burning a flag is inciting violence against federal employees.
00:10:00.000That's not saying we should kill federal employees is inciting violence against federal employees saying let's go over to that federal employee and shoot him in the head.
00:10:08.000That's inciting violence against federal employees saying like you burned a flag.
00:10:20.000So would you say that's protected or not?
00:10:22.000Well, no, because we have a long established thing that you can't literally just go and do a criminal action and call that free speech.
00:10:29.000Like conspiracy is not covered by by freedom of speech like conspiracy is not covered by freedom of speech actually like going and committing crimes is not covered by freedom of speech but people are generally surprised by how far you can go in terms of advocating bad things and still not run a fall of freedom of speech laws.
00:10:47.000You pretty much can say, like, I think we should overthrow the federal government and it doesn't violate freedom of speech under what I mean.
00:10:53.000Because the statute, of course, is is you have to take some kind of action in furtherance of the conspiracy.
00:10:58.000So if you and I are texting and we make a joke about that, it's it's just a joke.
00:11:03.000But if we then take an act to this, this is came up in like the Whitmer plot, for example.
00:11:09.000They said they were talking about things and then they went and start got into this van.
00:11:13.000And, you know, of course, there were like federal agents all over it.
00:11:16.000But then it was the act of driving around Whitmer's, you know, residence and her.
00:11:22.000her area they claimed that was a surveillance route so that was the act in furtherance of it so the speech itself wouldn't have been enough to trigger the conspiracy statute it was the actual you know act towards the conspiracy.
00:11:35.000So yeah, finish the thought, like then I have a question.
00:11:37.000Well, so I was saying similarly with incitement, like to actually reach incitement, traditionally you need multiple elements that like would point towards directly and immediately doing a criminal act.
00:11:47.000So you can't even say like you could pretty much say we should kill federal employees.
00:12:04.000So once you have those, you're advocating a specific criminal act and then you're directly inciting a criminal act, but just burning a flag, who are you specifically calling to target?
00:12:16.000And that's again, how it immediately can becomes abusable where, oh, you Well, you have to go to jail because actually you're inciting violence against Muslims.
00:12:28.000And you've said this a couple of times now, and you're acting as if people wouldn't go to jail or face repercussions for those things when we've seen multiple instances of that.
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00:14:17.000So that law, that ruling was more of a quote unquote constitutional norm, the Roe v Wade ruling, which created this right to abortion that's nowhere in the Constitution.
00:14:28.000And then year and conservatives fought against that for fifty years because it's obviously not in the Constitution and it's obviously an immoral act and it's obviously wrong.
00:14:37.000Then you have this flag burning protection, which was just read into the Constitution by a bunch of libs.
00:14:43.000And yeah, okay, he's got Scalia to go along.
00:15:04.000Expression is not obviously a physical act of speech.
00:15:08.000If you want to take it literally then, like things that you can't imagine anything that would fall under the banner of freedom of speech that isn't literally.
00:15:14.000I don't think that burning a flag is speech.
00:15:16.000don't think that pornography is speech.
00:15:18.000I don't think that any of these things are speech.
00:15:20.000Let's Anything you publish on the internet, that's not speech.
00:16:20.000So, Jack, do you have the right to pray, let's just say silently.
00:16:30.000express the like a catholic ceremony is that speech or is that expression and do you have a right to that well you have a right to the free exercise of religion which is separate from the right for speech right well okay so they're both in the first amendment but you are correct one is the establishment clause and one is the free expression clause right so it it technically but it doesn't say expression it says it's not speech the word expression is not in the constitution right correct but the essence so Blake is right.
00:16:59.000You're being a little bit woodenly here, right?
00:17:02.000So just, just, I'm being very careful about this, Charlie, because this is how Marxists get in, and this is how they sneak abortion and all these other things into the constitution that just aren't there.
00:17:11.000I think we need to be really careful if we're adding words.
00:19:28.000But, but, Tyler, you're making a different point about the national implications, right?
00:19:32.000The total national implications of allowing a country to, to, then down the slippery slope of being anti American, anti Team America.
00:19:42.000I mean, look, I'm wearing my USA sweater just for this debate, which is just right now, which is that an individual is far more protected than if you allow a country to go down the slippery slope.
00:19:55.000of having the entire brand for what you're doing, just completely burned on the sidewalk right in front of the White House.
00:21:15.000It's important because what you're getting at is you're getting back towards the desecration of symbols that have reverence towards a people, right?
00:21:23.000That's the whole idea of the flag, right?
00:21:58.000I am saying, I'm just saying that, you know, given the reading of the Constitution versus, you know, sort of my own personal beliefs, is that, is that that power is left up to the states?
00:22:32.000I think it is a valid means in the sense that I think freedom of speech emerged from a cyclical period that we went through for hundreds of years, not so much in America, but especially in Europe, in England, the country that gave birth to us, where you had cyclical patterns of ideologically driven violence.
00:22:50.000against people based on their religious beliefs, based on their political beliefs, in which huge numbers of people died.
00:22:56.000Like a higher percentage of Britain died in the English Civil War than died in our own civil war.
00:23:04.000And the norms of freedom of speech developed after that as essentially this is our proxy to make make sure we don't kill each other.
00:23:10.000And the way you do that is you have a much stronger right to express yourself.
00:23:15.000And the desire to crack down on what people are saying is always a prelude to the desire to do other things to marked ideological enemies.
00:23:23.000But I also think it's a valid end in and of itself because I think what freedom of speech is recognizing, like what it's deriving from, is it's very tyrannical to basically assert control over another person's conscience, which you're effectively doing when you're saying you are not allowed to make this form to basically state this view or to make this form of expression.
00:23:46.000And yeah, I'll acknowledge that burning the flag is probably the edgemost case because it is, you know, it's a physical act as opposed to stating some sort of religious idea or political idea directly.
00:24:00.000But I think it's an important edge case and I think it's actually valid to defend that edge case.
00:24:06.000And I think we're already seeing the issues with that, which is once you're saying it's, you know, it's okay to ban this form of symbolic expression, let's ban other forms of symbolic expression.
00:24:17.000I think it's good to be in a country where we can burn the Quran, which they can't do in European countries.
00:24:23.000Let me take Charlie's question one step further.
00:24:26.000Do you agree with the burning of the US Constitution?
00:24:30.000Do you think the US Constitution should be it should be legal to burn the US Constitution in front of the White House?
00:24:36.000Yeah, I'm subject to I think people are kind of mixing it up when they say, oh, well, there's arson laws.
00:24:45.000You can't do something manifestly unsafe.
00:24:47.000In the same way they can't blockade traffic and call it speech.
00:24:51.000But if you have the right to any place where we have the right to burn anything, it should include by extension the right to, yeah, burn the flag, burn the Constitution, burn any book.
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00:26:10.000The reason why this topic is so good is that it is the meeting point, the convergence of a rights-based legal regime and society and a duty and obligation-based society.
00:26:25.000And that's why this issue is so good, because it hits together of, wait, do we have any sort of sacrosanct objects or duty to something bigger than ourselves?
00:26:37.000And you kind of combine all these things together, it makes it a very interesting issue.
00:26:43.000No, and that's actually right in line with where my thought process was, was you have to have some of these symbolic elements within the society to be able to establish culture and for people to largely respect the culture.
00:26:56.000I mean, we talk about Russian culture all the time during this Russian Ukrainian conflict.
00:27:02.000We talk about other places oftentimes.
00:27:05.000There are things that are just not allowed to be touched in other places that allow for the establishment of a culture where you the sanctity of the US constitution, the American flag should be something that as a culture, you can't touch.
00:27:24.000Otherwise, there's no way to protect all of the other things.
00:27:28.000And I, you know, I'll kind of, and again, I don't know if this is the point Charlie was making with was provoking with some of this was if you allow those things to happen, it makes it so much easierier for, especially if you're letting in millions of immigrants into this country.
00:27:43.000It makes it so much easier just to tread all over what makes this country culturally relevant.
00:27:49.000And that's a real problem, I think, for a lot of people.
00:27:52.000Well, well, Tyler, just to follow up on that, like you're talking about things that just don't work in a country that has mass migration like we have, right?
00:28:02.000So when we were at the, it's not 1989 anymore, right?
00:28:07.000So the things that, like the tail end of sort of like the boomer countercultural movement, uh, right before they all started, you know, moving into office themselves was was this ruling and it's the country is vastly different than it was 40 years ago uh the country is vastly more diverse than it was 40 years ago we're in a prop we have a problem in this country right now because we have these mat these massive uh multinational mini nation enclaves
00:28:38.000all throughout the country we have a situation where a guy who just became the uh you know just became an american citizen is about to be the mayor of new york uh you have people like umar fatah who was running in um in in gosh in minneapolis which has this horrific killing.
00:28:55.000I don't know what his current status is because they pulled his endorsement or whatever.
00:28:59.000But, you know, we're in this situation where the reason that we are seeing the rise of populist nationalism is because we are having this very directly rally around the nation moment.
00:29:10.000And in a rally around the nation moment, you must protect your most sacred object to your nation.
00:29:17.000That's why when I talk about this like, you know, would I support this ban or this protection or that ban?
00:29:23.000You know, the reason that I come down for a federal ban on flag burning is specifically that because we need to have sort of the one symbol to rule us all and and it's that and then you know you know Blake just comes out here simping for commies hardcore like please please let the commies burn our flag it's like why are conservatives so obsessed with helping our enemies to be able to conduct their means only radical communists want to do that but it's like people who support this just just
00:29:54.000one to lose if you just want to lose guess what this is a legitimate question like i have a question for you actually it's a legitimate question and i don't know if this is true or not but in the vatican would you get thrown in jail for burning you know an effigy of the mother of mary no idea i i don't know does the vatican even have a jail it's it's like not very big i imagine i'm sure they do i mean i hope so i'd have to check but i certainly would not put up with it Probably
00:30:22.000not, but the Vatican is also an absolute monarchy.
00:30:25.000I don't want to live in an absolute monarchy.
00:30:26.000monarchy yeah but they have some symbols yeah but the vatican is like a the vatican is like with all due respect the vatican is a fake country it's like a nominal country to like preserve like the catholic church as an institution in you know and it acknowledges because they used to have a larger state i don't need to get into all the more provocative the more provocative thing that what Jack is arguing for is the same sort of speech codes of blasphemy protections that Saudi Arabia has for the Prophet Muhammad.
00:30:57.000And that, I mean, that, like, am I wrong by saying that?
00:31:10.000Historically, America has been way better than most other countries, especially on speech.
00:31:15.000I think I was always very proud of the fact.
00:31:18.000I would have this thought, you know, when I was in high school and college that like I think it's good that in America we kind of consider it almost unthinkable that we would have 30 arrests per day to have like the police show up because like, oh, you said a thing on Facebook that wasn't very nice and it was incitement.
00:31:35.000We're going to you're conflating to you.
00:31:37.000And I think, frankly, the flag part folds directly into this this general norm that in America, like.
00:31:52.000And the more ways you, the more excuses you give the government that they can use to justify suppressing it, the more ways they have to put their thumb on the scale, which is why I brought up the part about incitement.
00:32:04.000No, finish your thought on incitement.
00:32:06.000So it's like, again, it's like when you get when you allow the government to have more ways that they can justify cutting down on speech, such as that it's incitement of violence, you're giving more ways that you can curtail what Americans are allowed to think.
00:32:22.000And that's kind of I think what they already do with like, for example, you know, you can't burn the gay flag.
00:32:27.000They're like, well, it's really it's an it's inciting hate against this community.
00:32:45.000Well, I think we have a much more robust tradition of being able to separate like just obscene behavior from expression like burning a flag is pretty clearly a political tradition yet this is a great story that this is a great that porn is speech well so for example freedom of speech doesn't protect you from fraud like you can't defraud somebody and say that it's freedom of speech our freedom of speech protections have always been the most maximalist the most intense on things that are direct political expression because that's clearly
00:34:13.000That's actually why we define the Constitution so strictly in the Constitution, because in England, before, you know, in the English Revolution, which preceded our own, we saw this where they were charging people with treason for things like that, where they're like, oh, well, we think you're undermining the state, so that's treason.
00:34:30.000And so that's why the Constitution says it shall only consist of levying war against the United States or adhering to its enemies, giving them aid and comfort, which adhering to the enemyemies.
00:34:41.000Obviously that's more loose, but I think it's designed to capture like literally deserting to another country.
00:34:46.000So providing them with intelligence, providing them material support in a conflict.
00:34:53.000I guess that's why I brought up the burning of the US Constitution.
00:34:56.000So there's this, there's a clear difference between, you know, burning the effigy of a tyrant versus burning the US Constitution or something that represents the US Constitution and wanting to move more towards tyranny.
00:35:12.000I mean, most of the people, I mean, wouldn't you agree that are engaging in the anti American rhetoric are more along the communist, marxist line of thinking that are actually moving us away from what the constitution represents.
00:35:28.000I guess that's where I have the biggest problem.
00:36:41.000If Blake is completely right, then that can easily be extrapolated to drag queen story hour and to obscene stuff because the court will say, hey, you know, you can burn a flag.
00:36:54.000You can have, hey, public, like publicly nude beaches because it's freedom of expression.
00:37:07.000Jack has to reckon with and reconcile that such restrictions on burning a flag of American flag will 100% be used to say that we cannot also burn an LGBT flag or even worse, like it's going to restrict freedom of expression in general.
00:37:24.000Unfortunately, the courts which we already have no nuance on this.
00:37:28.000So what we want is we, but I guess the question is, Jack, if you had to choose, if you had to choose, this is why Jack's argument is at his weakest, and I want him to respond.
00:37:39.000If you had to choose one where we had a UK style form of speech code where people are going to knock on your door and get restricted or if you had to choose kind of the libertarian thing where like, hey, burn what you want, do what you want which one would be better for our side i mean it's it's a total false binary that you're setting up there we don't live in the uk it's it's not so jack it's not the problem is it's you're choosing it's a complete false binary this is a 1999 jack you are putting forward a
00:38:09.000lea jack let me finish my thought you're putting forward a legal theory that nobody agrees with in the entire federal bench there's only really two ways free speech absolutism or speech restrictionism on like European style.
00:38:27.000So you have to choose kind of which navigational path to go on.
00:38:32.000And honestly, I don't like when people burn the flag.
00:39:10.000If you had to choose, if you, again, you keep interrupting me.
00:39:14.000I'll just kind of let you guys chat because that's not a discussion.
00:39:16.000So if you had to choose, I would much rather lean on the side of disgusting things being allowed to say, be said, rather than having a government be able to restrict what we as conservatives want to say.
00:39:33.000I actually agree with you, but we have to deal with reality, not just a theoretical, esoteric project.
00:39:38.000There's the two choices in front of us, which is libertarian free speech approach, which is the ACLU agenda, or we can go the way of just pure European totalitarianism.
00:40:56.000I'm arguing on the current legal regime.
00:40:59.000leans either the European direction or the Blake Neff libertarian free speech direction.
00:41:06.000And you have to choose which side you kind of want your volitional energy to go towards and we can hope and wish and pray that a prudential bench of classical, you know, Western canonized, you know, nationalists don't rise up in the legal community.
00:41:21.000But it's Charlie's saying that you would go ahead.
00:41:28.000Well, I was just going to say, I think, I think in those terms, I think, I think all of us would agree the, the Blake Neff free speech method.
00:41:38.000That's what's better than the totalitarian.
00:41:40.000And that is the choice in front of us.
00:41:42.000So that's the, that's the obvious answer.
00:41:46.000I think the idea is that if there's one thing that we can carve out and if there's something that we can be politically ambitious on, it's look, protect the culture and the concept of America, especially in this time period that we're in this very unique time period right now with Trump,
00:42:07.000where it's like, well, hey, we may be able to maximize, especially with the young men that are out there that are feeling really weird about all the side conversations and side quests that the left has gone down on attacking America.
00:42:24.000This might be the time to kind of take our own Roe v Wade.
00:42:28.000And again, I don't want to put it in those terms because I know that probably Jack won't really appreciate that, but this might be an opportunity for us to take some ground and let the left fight over that for the next thirty years at this time.
00:43:10.000It is a symbol that people carry into battle.
00:43:13.000That is why American soldiers, when they go into, that's why the flag on the uniform is printed backwards if you look at a uniform because it is meant to represent the flag being carried into battle.
00:43:26.000And that's why as a symbol of our nation, yes, it should be sacrosanct.
00:43:43.000It is the smart move politically and it is the smart move nationally.
00:43:47.000Well, there's a lot of constitutional rights that don't pull with majority support or even close to it.
00:43:52.000I would say I want to I want to close on kind of an important thought because we had this back and forth on whether expression counts as part of the First Amendment.
00:44:01.000And all I would say is if freedom of expression is not a right that you have, then the government can compel expression.
00:44:10.000what if the government wants to make you salute the gay flag?
00:44:45.000Well, when we're in a situation now when we don't have Marxists shooting up Catholic schools and Marxists marching on Washington burning flags, and we've just spent a couple of years dealing with all this in the streets, then maybe, maybe I'll be worried about someone trying to pass a law that says I have to support the pride flag.
00:45:04.000But here in reality, that is the culture war that we're in.
00:45:08.000That is the culture war that we have a actual fighting chance of winning right now.
00:45:16.000And like the truth is, the government, if it can ban burning the flag because freedom of expression is not real, well, they could ban you posting a meme that they don't like because the meme's not speech.
00:46:37.000You can't have nice things like that when the situation is what it is regarding the American flag.
00:46:43.000So this is the political jiu-jitsu though, Blake, is if you actually make flag burning illegal, then the left starts fighting on behalf of free speech, which is what you want.
00:46:54.000Well, no, I would say the best part about this is just that it'll probably provoke the left to burn flags and that's good because burning the flag is unpopular.
00:47:07.000So then the left will fight for free speech, which is what you want.
00:47:11.000I think there's some really good takeaways, though, which is that we should fight for this politically very carefully and prudently, though.
00:47:19.000I think you should be able to burn the Quran.
00:47:22.000I think you should be able to desecrate other people's religious symbols.
00:47:25.000However, if you want to pick a fight for national unity on a singular flag object, great.
00:47:31.000But I think we got to also take a page off of Blake's book that, hey, like it's good that we're able to just speak openly on the show right now, guys, called Thought Crime.
00:47:40.000And we don't have to worry about, you know, being arrested for hate speech by some sort of government agency.
00:48:27.000So certainly, you know, stand with the president on that.
00:48:30.000But this has always been something that I'm for, even, you know.
00:48:33.000far before President Trump became involved politically.
00:48:37.000And it's something where I believe the way the Constitution is written as current, right, as it currently stands, is that it makes sense for this to be a state's rights issue.
00:48:50.000So when, which is what I was saying when I was talking about the religious symbols as well.
00:48:55.000So we do have that as the, you know, you know, as freedom of religion.
00:48:59.000But when it comes to things like desecration of the flag, whether that counts, this is what why we have federalism.
00:49:51.000No, I know, but if it's bad, just ban it.
00:49:52.000I mean, that's kind of, that's my view, which is especially we're not talking about like not burning the North Carolina flag or not burning the Arizona flag.
00:50:01.000So I think, again, I just, the states thing, I'm just kind of getting tired of this whole states thing because it just kind of feels like a little bit of a, a little bit of a cop out more broadly in the moment but it is just great no fine if you guys have private student loan debt this is the best way out they are phenomenal supporters of our student action summit america fest our campus tours many clients are not able to make the minimum monthly payment on their private student loans when they first contact yrefi if you go to yrefi.com you can read
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00:51:21.000I mean, I think I basically said my piece on this.
00:51:24.000I just think a great thing in America that has not, you know, we sometimes talk about like, okay, it wasn't always the case, but we've had that on other things, like we had it with Jim Crow.
00:51:34.000Like we've been able to acknowledge that America's constitutional rights have been imperfectly applied at times, that they were not extended to everyone that they actually belong to.
00:51:44.000And I think we can easily say that's the case.
00:51:46.000with freedom of speech that before the civil war in the south you didn't have real freedom of speech you didn't actually have the full freedom to uh criticize slavery they would literally go and they would smash your press up and it has taken time for it took time for us to reach the full flowering of American freedom of speech.
00:52:05.000I think it basically took until about World War II for it to happen.
00:52:09.000But I think that was a great example of America at its absolute peak.
00:52:13.000We were at the absolute peak of freedom of expression.
00:52:16.000And just at that time, we start seeing censorship tendrils start to spread in the rest of the world.
00:52:23.000We start seeing, you know, you can say we'll never be like England, but England didn't think it would ever be like England.
00:52:28.000That's where we got freedom of speech from.
00:52:30.000They were the freest country in the world in terms of speech for a very long time.
00:52:35.000And they allowed themselves to move in a different direction where now they have blasphemy laws.
00:52:40.000Now they have these very loose incitement laws where you can't say certain things.
00:52:45.000Now you can get in trouble in England for like waving the flag of England because they will consider it incitement.
00:52:52.000And again, if expression is not included within what the First Amendment protects, then you can criminalize forms of expression, not just burning a flag, but also waving a certain flag.
00:53:04.000And if that's going to happen, if that's going to be an option on the table, the left will do it.
00:53:09.000I don't want the left to be able to do it.
00:53:12.000Well, not to open a whole new can of worms, but, you know, this kind of got opened up.
00:53:17.000I totally support states throwing people in jail for burning the state flag and protecting state sovereignty against the federal, against the federal government.
00:53:25.000And I think this actually is connected because the federal government coming in and saying that, oh, it's protected speech to burn a state flag when a state itself should be protecting its people against the federal government is a whole other conversation that is really important for America to have because I think states should be able to protect their brand, their culture, everything else against the federal government.
00:53:50.000Maybe they'll really start to silence.
00:53:53.000But we have social technology matters.
00:53:55.000It's like monogamy is a social social technology and all these things.
00:54:00.000And we're basically when we say, let's throw this away and bring back flag burning laws, we're saying, let us get rid, let us diminuate, let us curtail the piece of social technology we have in America that makes it so that we are not like China, not like the UK, not like continental Europe, not like Saudi Arabia.
00:54:20.000So unfortunately, the problem is, I would just say the problem is, is that in reality, when We have too many people here from different countries.
00:54:36.000We have too many people who believe in different isms, transgenderism is their identity.
00:54:41.000So the biggest problem in America today is because we have not only these many nations of ethnic enclaves, but many nations of of identity.
00:54:51.000And so if you hold up one thing and say, this is the thing that we should all rally behind, the red, white, and blue.
00:54:58.000And it doesn't matter what race, what creed, what color you are.
00:55:02.000This is the one thing that is protected that we will rally behind, that if we don't, that we will continue to fight each other and this country will just be torn apart.
00:55:12.000It will just be absolutely torn apart.
00:55:15.000And I think that's the main reason that President Trump is doing this now, to give us a symbol that we can all rally behind.
00:55:23.000Tyler, really quick, your thought on Taylor Swift submitting to Travis Kelsey and changing her name.
00:55:29.000I hope Travis Kelsey has Kelsey has the worst season ever and everyone blames Taylor Swift and everyone gets the great picture, the grand picture.
00:55:38.000I hope he's the worst, I hope he's the worst drafted fantasy football player in the history of fantasy football players and he has the worst year ever.
00:56:43.000I have, listen, all I know is this, that Hillary Clinton was smart enough to take advantage of a man for her own, you know, uh, betterment.
00:56:55.000And this is exactly what Taylor Swift has done in this relationship with Travis Kelsey.
00:56:59.000It's not even if it lasts like Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton's marriage has lasted, it hasn't been good for America and neither will Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey.
00:57:09.000I don't care how many nasty tweets I'm going to get after this.
00:57:13.000Yeah, no, the reason that you see the memes of Travis Kelsey being pregnant and Taylor Swift like, you know, wearing the, actually, I haven't seen this meme yet.
00:57:24.000We should make one of Taylor Swift wearing the tuxedo and Travis Kelsey wearing the dress, even though I'm not sharing them myself because, you know, this, this like.
00:57:37.000So when you see this video they're showing right here, when you see Taylor Swift put the claw on Travis Kelsey's face, the way she has, it's a domination move.
00:57:47.000Newsweek wrote me up for saying this last year.
00:57:49.000And she produces these domination moves and domination gestures over and over and over.
00:57:55.000This is also similar to the Green Line test that Alpha Rivalino uses.
00:58:00.000And she's constantly doing this to him, whereas he's leaning into her.
00:58:06.000And this shows, and it's something that we can all subliminally or just subconsciously understand, that she has the dominant power in that relationship and he is the submissive.
00:58:17.000this is the anti-biblical status where basically Taylor Swift acts like a man and Travis Kelsey acts like a woman and that's why the those memes get traction, because we can tell that he is a submissive man to the dominant girl boss feminist icon that he is now getting married to.