Two 18–year old Floridians (Scott Baber and Brian Richard III), who The Smoking Gun calls the Baby-faced Anarchists, are facing felony arson charges (among other raps) for a flag-burning spree earlier this week.

According to sheriff’s investigators, the little anarchists drove around a Sarasota subdivision, red gasoline canister in hand, and set fire to several American flags flying outside homes. For his part, Baber, a cook at Tijuana Flats, said he targeted the American flag because he:

“…disagreed with Free Trade, how the American Government is being run and the war in Iraq.”

Richard, who is unemployed and goes by the nickname Lil’ B, said he torched Old Glory

“because of who stands behind the American flag,” adding that he disagrees with the Iraq war and believes President Bush has brainwashed Americans.

As TSG accurately states, facing many years in prison, perhaps the Baby-face Anarchists may want to consider fashioning a better defense than they were fighting…free-trade(?)

If not for the fact that Beavis and Butthead were igniting flags that were attached to occupied houses, I’d be snickering at their political and economic nativity. As if in their 18 years of living, a cook at Tijuana Flats and unemployed Lil’B know squat about what free-trade even is.

The good news is that we won’t need to wait for a constitutional amendment to prosecute these clowns. That part is easy. What will be more difficult what are we going to do about educating the general populace the true facts about free trade?

Driven by unions and a compliant media, the concept of free trade has been turned upside-down and now gets blamed for all sorts of ills from uncompetitive American companies cutting workforces to famines in Africa and melting ice caps. As if putting up trade barriers would stop any of these. If they did then North Korea and Cuba would have the most vibrant economies in the world, not the most stagnant.

No the problem isn’t flag burning, as XRLQ points out in the link above, as such demonstrations are a handy way for dumbasses to publicly identify themselves. The real issue is ignorance, and this is one problem than cannot be simply amended away.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 1st, 2005 at 6:25 am by Insider and is filed under Funny ... to us. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.