While I believe that flag burning is generally in poor taste and of questionable utility, the reality is that the flag represents a country that gives you the freedom of political expression. Prevent someone from doing so through legislation and you may as well be using his lighter to torch the Bill of Rights. To protect the flag from flag burners is to protect a symbol by destroying the very thing for which that symbol stands.

Americans who fought and died in national conflicts did so for those freedoms of speech, not a piece of cloth. Refusing to honor those freedoms does a greater disservice to the memory of their sacrifice than burning a piece of cloth.

(Besides, our flag, the symbol of enduring freedom, was probably made by overworked children in Communist China. )