Why it’s a stupid thing to burn the American flag

From a commentary by Paul Street- ‘A generation before, American working class organizers did something similar. They worked carefully and patiently through existing labor, neighborhood, ethnic, and workplace structures and networks to develop operational tactics and strategies – shop-steward systems, coordinated work stoppages in key industrial departments (ie, packinghouse kill floors, auto plant foundries), sit-down strikes, community campaigns and more – to bring about the emergence of a durable union presence and collective bargaining to the American industrial sector. The labor militants of the 1930s and 1940s knew what they wanted and how to get it. The result was a significant improvement in living standard and political power of the American working class. This legacy of rational, planned, deliberate and strategic progressive left activism was largely blown up in the late 1960s. In his 2003 book The Postmodern Prince, the left philosopher John Sanbonmatsu describes the rise of a not particularly effective “politics of expression” that was more about giving voice to one’s anger, alienation, and identity than about achieving any specific ends or changing mass consciousness.’

This argument against Leftists stupidly burning the American flag continues in Paul Street’s commentary- On the Fetishization of Expression