NBC "opinion:" "our flag and our NATION don't have any virtue:"

Yesterday NBC published an "opinion piece."  The lines below are from its final paragraph:

The [American] flag, and the nation, don't have any virtue. Only human beings can have that.... This nation must care more about its soul than its symbols. It's better to burn a flag than a person.

The author of this crap is a wacko named Noah Berlatsky, who seems to write regularly for NBC, and he shows why most normal Americans hate the Lying Mainstream Media.

Berlatsky would be right at home writing propaganda for Joseph Stalin.  He's got it down to an art.

Start by considering his claim that "the nation"--most Americans would have said "our" nation--doesn't have any virtue, and that only human beings--presumably citizens of our nation--can have virtue.  But what IS "the nation"?  Seems reasonable to conclude that citizens are the nation, but apparently Berlatsky disagrees, since he distinguishes between "the nation" and human beings--by which he seems to mean the citizens of our nation.

Next note the false choice he presents in his last sentence: "It's better to burn a flag than a person."  This is a classic propaganda technique:  Propagandists ostensibly offer the reader a choice between a clearly terrible act versus an obviously less-critical act, but one that the reader would normally never have considered.  Since the only rational option is the less-terrible one, the unwary reader has just been subtly conditioned to regard the less-terrible option as acceptable.

Example: In the former Soviet Union a 13-year-old boy reported his parents to the authorities for anti-communist sentiments.  Stalin had the parents executed...but then made a hero out of the orphaned boy for helping ensure the continued dominance of the communist state.

Stalin's effusive, continued honoring of this "brave young man"--a boy willing to betray his own parents in order to protect the communist government ("the motherland")--moved Soviet citizens to tears for years afterward.  I mean, how BRAVE, how "progressive" of this young boy to betray his own parents for the far more important cause of supporting The Cause, eh?

NBC's Berlatsky

Finally, consider Berlatsky's assertion that only humans can have virtue.  This one is subtle but effective, because when people accept the assertion that it's perfectly fine to trash national symbols like the flag without being seriously criticized, there are very predictable consequences.

At first glance that's trivial, eh?  I mean, a flag is just fabric, right?  So what does it matter, or hurt, if someone burns it in protest, or walks on it?  Just free speech that doesn't harm anything, right?

That reasoning persuaded the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled years ago that flag-burning was protected free speech.  Same for burning a Bible.  So presumably any American is equally free to burn a copy of the koran, right?

Nope.  If you burn a koran you're guilty of "causing a public disturbance" and can be jailed on the spot.

Now if you're a liberal this seems perfectly reasonable.  After all, a communist artist won huge acclaim from New York liberals and Time magazine for exhibiting a large photo of a crucifix submerged in urine.  All perfectly fine, free-speechy expression.  Cuz in lib-world some religions can be sneered at with no consequences.

Think it would ever even occur to a liberal "artist" to exhibit a photo of a copy of the koran submerged in urine?

"OMG, HATE SPEECH!!  Shut down his exhibit immediately!!"

So clearly, SOME symbols are regarded as having enough virtue to be defended by force.  Just not the symbols of things you love and revere.

Cool, eh?  Can you say "double standard"?  Sure you can.

Point is, symbols are obviously shorthand for things we revere.  While it's obvious that symbols aren't the thing itself, getting people to believe that it's okay to trash symbols conditions citizens to trash the thing the symbol symbolizes.

Here's a thought experiment:  Next time you see a leftist burning the flag, or a copy of the Constitution, ask him if he's doing it to show hates the fabric (or the paper), or something else.