DEAR News Of The Area,
HISTORY shows us that authoritarian regimes – including Nazi Germany – treated symbolic dissent as a crime.
Burning a flag, questioning a leader, or refusing to perform patriotic rituals could lead to imprisonment or worse.
When modern governments talk about jailing people for symbolic protest, they are echoing the same logic used by regimes that demanded loyalty to a symbol instead of loyalty to freedom. When a government says that burning a flag – a symbolic act of protest – should carry a jail sentence, it isn’t protecting the nation.
It’s protecting its own authority.
That’s the same logic used by regimes throughout history that demanded loyalty to a symbol instead of loyalty to freedom.
Our diggers didn’t die for enforced reverence; they died so that Australians would never be punished for expressing dissent.
Regards,
Calvin BARTLETT,
Coffs Harbour.
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