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As a citizen, protest is valid when the target is the govenment, parliament or any other group - but the nation?

However lofty the ideals of a nation, the acts of that nation are the acts of its government -- and it is judged by others, and so in a sense defined, by those acts. Does anyone actually think that flag-burners are protesting against liberty, equality, and justice? Their very point is surely that the American flag ceased being synonymous with those ideals when it was raised over Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib.

Peter

(And because before I've been accused of anti-American bias because of my opposition to certain currrent US policies, I'll add that of course the Union Flag has from time to time been raised over atrocities just as severe. But I don't have a problem with criticising my nation when it does something crap, and if Northern Irish citizens were burning Union Flags in Belfast in the 1980s -- which I don't know whether they were, it's not such a popular form of protest over here -- then I'd have been all in favour.)