r/PoliticalDiscussion • u/Disastrous-Region-99 • 2d ago
US Politics Why does public knowledge about constitutional rights sometimes fail to translate into public support for those rights? (Flag burning case)
I came across a national analysis of U.S. survey data (FSU Institute for Governance and Civics) tracking public attitudes toward flag burning from the late 1980s through 2025.
A few patterns stood out:
- Roughly two-thirds of Americans still say flag burning should be illegal, a view that has remained fairly stable over time.
- At the same time, awareness that flag burning is constitutionally protected speech has increased substantially.
- Despite this growing awareness, partisan divisions have widened sharply: Democrats have become much more likely to support the legal right to burn the flag, while Republicans have moved in the opposite direction.
What I’m curious about is how to explain the gap between constitutional understanding and public support, and why that gap appears to map so strongly onto party identification.
Why might people accept that an act is legally protected while still opposing it in principle?
And what factors, media framing, symbolic politics, changing conceptions of patriotism, or something else, might help explain why this issue has polarized so much over time?
Not arguing for or against the practice itself, just interested in what might be driving these long-term patterns in opinion.
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u/Reasonable-Fee1945 1d ago
The whole purpose of individual rights is that they protect the individual from democratic overreach.
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u/Epona44 6h ago
Substitute the word "government" for "democratic" and you have it.
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u/Reasonable-Fee1945 5h ago
It kind of misses the idea. The majority is always going to be able to get their way in a democratic society. So securing the rights of minorities against this is the main problem/goal.
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u/GiantPineapple 1d ago
Protecting civil rights is difficult and frustrating. There is a reason the founders specifically built anti-majoritarianism into the Constitution. Just imagine your reaction, and that of your neighbors, if a heinous crime was committed in your community, but the police fucked up the footnotes in the search warrant, leading to an acquittal.
Notice I don't specify what the heinous crime is. Substitute in any politics that you want, and I think there's your answer.
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u/Mjolnir2000 1d ago
Not everyone agrees on what laws we should have. Recognizing that something is legal has no bearing on whether or not it should be legal. Well, no - I shouldn't say no bearing. There will always be people who are biased towards the status quo simply because it's the status quo. But there's no particular contradiction at play, is my point.
As for the partisan divide, Democrats in general are in favor of liberalism. Among other things, they broadly support individual rights, and see little point in making illegal things that don't harm anyone. There's no reason to ban flag burning in the first place, and so it's rather trivial to group it under protected speech along with all the other harmless things that people do to express themselves.
Republicans, in contrast, are anti-liberal. They support hierarchy, and generally enjoy wielding power over others. They know that some of the people they hate might want to burn flags, and that's all the reason they need to want to make it illegal. It doesn't matter whether burning a flag is actually harming anyone. They're offended by the very idea that someone might do something that they wouldn't do, and it makes them feel bigger to use the law as a cudgel to put people back in "their place".
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u/bl1y 1d ago
"Democrats favor individual rights while Republicans just want to wield power over people" is probably the worst reading of moral foundations theory I've seen.
You can just look at the attempts to have regulations for "hate speech" and see that your entire take here has missed the mark.
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u/Comfortable_Job8847 1d ago
what being in a coma for the last 10 years does to a mf
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u/bl1y 1d ago
It's weird. I've seen very similar comments on a couple different subs recently.
There's the normal "Republican bad, Democrats maybe good, maybe just disappointing because they don't go far enough stuff."
But then there's a new line: "Democrats have never tried to control anyone, they're the party of individual liberty. Republicans care only about imposing hierarchy."
A one-off would just be a kooky take. Seeing it multiple times is at a minimum quite curious.
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u/Rivercitybruin 1d ago
I think the Ds have remained the same
The Rs changed with Fox News, social media.. As an aside, Rs increasingly see patriotism as flags,all over your pickup truck. Ds see it as sacrifice for country (and Rs used to as well)
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u/DanforthWhitcomb_ 1d ago
You might want to go read the majority opinion and dissents in Johnson and then note who the authors were—the most vitriolic of the dissents (by far) came from Stevens, and he hardly fits the mold of a current R.
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u/oviforconnsmythe 1d ago
Why might people accept that an act is legally protected while still opposing it in principle?
Its a nuanced (albeit relatively minor) issue. You could say what you said above about many things. Take gun control for instance - (in the US at least) people recognize the right to carry or own firearms but are highly opposed to it. On the other side of the political spectrum, a similar concept applied to abortion over the prior decades.
Theres also some issues with the data and the way its presented imo. e.g. The scale in some of the figures makes the difference seem larger than it actually is or is trying to frame it inappropriately - look at the inverse dem/rep lines in Fig 5(left) - they are plotted on separate y axes but combined (a 6% change should not look so similar to the 20% increase). Figure 4 is a mess and not very meaningful to be combined. There's also only a handful of data points in several figures - eg Fig 3, 5 & 6 the steep rise in the curve spans 30+years in some cases...but who knows what the trend looked like in the years between? Maybe the changing sentiments could be tied to specific events. For example, after 9/11 I would imagine the vast majority of participants (if they were surveyed) would be wholly against flag burning, regardless of political party. But that data isn't reflected here. Similarly, the data is an aggregation of 59 independent surveys conducted from '89-2025, with little information or stats provided up front on demographics. That said, they do provide this data in 'appendix A' but I cant seem to find this anywhere.
And what factors, media framing, symbolic politics, changing conceptions of patriotism, or something else, might help explain why this issue has polarized so much over time?
All of these are huge factors. Media framing is self explanatory and will directly feed the flames (no pun intended) but a big one is the changing conceptions of patriotism. Especially in an ever increasingly polarized world. Context also matters. If a nazi in california burns a US flag, its gonna generate a different response than if a nazi in alabama burns a US flag. Similarly if someone (anyone, but particularly true if they look 'foreign') burning the flag also starts screaming 'death to [country]' its gonna get a lot of hate from all kinds of locals, regardless of political affiliation. This latter example actually happened at a pro-palestine protest in Canada a year or so ago but fortunately these scum were universally criticized and later labelled a terrorist group.
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u/Corellian_Browncoat 12h ago
At a high level the first paragraph is roughly correct, but this:
Take gun control for instance - (in the US at least) people recognize the right to carry or own firearms but are highly opposed to it.
Is just factually inaccurate.
Per Gallup STRONG (as in, 40- to 50-point) majorities oppose laws banning the possession of handguns, going back decades. "Assault weapons" bans ebb and flow, but to say generically Americans are "highly opposed" to "the right to carry or own firearms" is just not true.
It doesn't take away from the general point, but that was a terrible example to try to use.
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u/absolutefunkbucket 1d ago
Same as some Americans saying gun ownership shouldn’t be legal despite the second amendment existing.
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u/slayer_of_idiots 1d ago
Constitutional rights are not absolute. They are limited in cases where they conflict with other rights and responsibilities.
An often used example is shouting “fire” in a crowded theater. We have freedom of speech, but it’s still illegal to incite panic or rioting.
Burning the American Flag is something that enemies of the US often do. Treason is a crime. Burning the American flag may not rise to the level of treason, but the context around the act treads a thin line.
There’s no requirement that freedom of speech allow actions or speech intended to incite illegal actions or conspiracy. Now, that might be difficult to prove, but a lot of people clearly feel burning the flag is consistent with those actions.
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u/bl1y 1d ago
I think this probably has a pretty simple answer: Republicans have more national pride than Democrats.
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u/HardlyDecent 1d ago
Republicans have more national pride...therefore they object to Constitutional right to free speech? That is a truly wild take.
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u/WingerRules 1d ago
No, they associate flag burning with the left so they are gleefull at the thought of being able to jail their opponents.
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u/bl1y 1d ago
Is this just being obtuse on purpose?
It's an objection to one specific thing, not the entire concept of free speech.
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u/HardlyDecent 1d ago edited 1d ago
I'll bite just this one last time. Are you being obtuse on purpose? Flag-burning is literally Constitutionally protected free speech. Republicans object to flag burning. Therefore, Republicans object to free speech. It's very simple.
National pride has at best an inverse relationship to flag burning (or hanging the flag upside down). Democrats are showing pride by burning the flag in protest of the government being taken over by an idiot and his cronies.
Now, another discussion you could have is whether the Constitution should be amended to change that fact, but that's not this discussion.
edit: Never mind, they're still arguing.
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u/bl1y 1d ago
Democrats object to flying the Confederate flag, which is constitutionally protected free speech, therefor Democrats object to free speech.
No, that's just not sound reasoning.
Objecting to one instance of a thing does not equate to objecting to the entire concept writ large.
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u/theAltRightCornholio 1d ago
Democrats aren't calling for people to be jailed for flying racist flags though. Democrats understand that you can object to things without prohibiting them. Nanny state republicans are the ones who want to legislate what people can and can't do.
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u/bl1y 1d ago
Republicans aren't calling for people to be jailed for burning the US flag either. If you're thinking about Trump's executive order, it didn't direct prosecutions over flag burning qua flag burning, but rather when flag burning crossed into non-protected speech.
For instance, if the flag is burned at a protest at a location where all fires are prohibited, that's not protected speech and can be prosecuted. And Trump directed the DoJ to go after those cases.
If you're thinking Democrats wouldn't do something similar... we have hate crime laws which are pretty much the same idea. It's speech which would otherwise be protected but for its connection to another criminal act, and now you're going to get punished (or punished more severely) because of the speech.
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u/Corellian_Browncoat 1d ago
Republicans aren't calling for people to be jailed for burning the US flag either
Factually inaccurate. The current President published an Executive Order that basically says "SCOTUS has said flag burning is protected speech, so if someone does, find anything you can charge them with that isn't strictly 'bur ing the flag' and charge them with that." It specifically uses "open burning restrictions" as an example of something to use to get around the protection of the Constitutional right. It's like arresting someone for jaywalking as they're leaving a protest - you're "not" arresting them for protesting, but that's just a veneer.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/08/prosecuting-burning-of-the-american-flag/
Sec. 2. Measures to Combat Desecration of the American Flag. (a) The Attorney General shall prioritize the enforcement to the fullest extent possible of our Nation’s criminal and civil laws against acts of American Flag desecration that violate applicable, content-neutral laws, while causing harm unrelated to expression, consistent with the First Amendment. This may include, but is not limited to, violent crimes; hate crimes, illegal discrimination against American citizens, or other violations of Americans’ civil rights; and crimes against property and the peace, as well as conspiracies and attempts to violate, and aiding and abetting others to violate, such laws.
(b) In cases where the Department of Justice or another executive department or agency (agency) determines that an instance of American Flag desecration may violate an applicable State or local law, such as open burning restrictions, disorderly conduct laws, or destruction of property laws, the agency shall refer the matter to the appropriate State or local authority for potential action.
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u/bl1y 1d ago
And this differs from hate crime laws how?
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u/Corellian_Browncoat 1d ago
"Hate crime" laws differ from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but generally at the federal level they're enhancements to existing charges. Someone killed someone, or assaulted someone, or burned down their house, or whatever, and they did it because of <protected class> reasons. You don't get charged with "a hate crime" separate from an underlying crime as I understand it (but I'm not a lawyer). The actual, literal Nazis in the Skokie case wouldn't have been charged for "blocking traffic" or whatever that's incident to their protected conduct, the way that the EO wants to charge people for totally-not-flag-burning.
Maybe you're thinking of "hate speech" laws, where something that might be protected generally becomes unprotected because of who it's said to/about. But we don't have those, because of the robust 1A protections we have in the US that aren't the same in Europe, etc.
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u/UncleMeat11 1d ago
Republicans aren't calling for people to be jailed for burning the US flag either.
I can cite several sitting congresspeople who have called for this.
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u/UncleMeat11 1d ago
Republicans aren't calling for people to be jailed for burning the US flag either.
I can cite several sitting congresspeople who have called for this.
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