Editor's Note: Bad Takes is a column of opinion and analysis.
Since the U.S. Supreme Court's 1989 Texas v. Johnson decision, the First Amendment has protected the right to burn the United States flag in public protest.
Army brat Gregory Johnson was born in Richmond, Indiana in 1956—then a town of fewer than 40,000 residents. As a kid, he helped deliver Stars and Stripes, the daily newspaper of the U.S. military, wherever his father was stationed, from Alabama to West Germany. Hearing the stories of returning Vietnam veterans, however, instilled a healthy distrust of government and sense of national betrayal where an uncritical patriotism once might have metastasized.
During the 1984 Republican National Convention in Dallas, Johnson unfurled the Stars and Stripes—the flag, not the magazine—in front of City Hall, doused it with kerosene and set it ablaze while fellow protesters chanted, "America, the red, white, and blue; we spit on you."
Dallas police arrested Johnson, but the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals reversed his conviction for flag desecration, holding that one cannot equate mere offensiveness with an "incitement to breach the peace." The Supreme Court agreed.
"We do not consecrate the flag by punishing its desecration, for in doing so we dilute the freedom that this cherished emblem represents," Justice William Brennan wrote for the majority.
Fast forward to 2023, and another performer of lyrical indignation is claiming to be a victim of censorship.
In this case, I'm referring to Jason Aldean, a golfing buddy of Donald Trump and one of the most celebrated stars in modern country music. In contrast to small-town boy Johnson, Aldean was born in Macon, Georgia, a city with a population well over 150,000.
Earlier this year, Aldean released a canned soft-rock tune titled "Try That in a Small Town" to little fanfare. That is until a controversial music video for the song dropped last month and CMT yanked it from rotation after just three days. Critics accused Aldean of displaying racial tone-deafness—or perhaps we should we say, colorblindness—for filming in front of the site of a 1927 lynching. They also blasted Aldean's songwriters and videographers with conflating protesters and criminals while romanticizing vigilante violence against both.
To judge for yourself, here are the lyrics that conclude the song's opening verse:
Stomp on the flag and light it up
Yeah, ya think you're tough
Well, try that in a small town
See how far ya make it down the road.
Translating that to rap lingo, the message is "fuck around and find out," where "fucking around" means exercising your First Amendment rights and "finding out" means getting physically stomped—or worse.
Fans of Aldean defend his video as a straightforward endorsement of "law and order." But aren't the constitutional protections afforded to symbolic speech the law of the land? And doesn't threatening protesters like Gregory Johnson with violence entail breaking the law?
Such subtleties seemed lost on Aldean, who's painted himself as the victim.
"You know how it is in this day and age, cancel culture is a thing," he recently said during a performance. "If people don't like what you say, they try and make sure that they can cancel you, which means try and ruin your life."
Doesn't trying to ruin someone's life also include not letting them "make it down the road?"
Why doesn't that silencing of dissent qualify as "cancel culture" too? And how can an explicit call to violently restrict free expression be mistaken for an advocacy of free expression?
In Aldean's music video, professionally shot stock footage of igniting Molotov cocktails and surveillance camera clips of armed robberies are interspersed with shots of Black Lives Matter militancy in the wake of the homicide of George Floyd and, somewhat inexplicably, a girl flipping off the cops in Berlin.
Aldean tweeted that "there isn't a single video clip that isn't real news footage"—a demonstrably false claim.
Note the double-standard, though: lawlessness in defense of supposed small town values is legitimate while lawlessness in protest of a cop committing murder is criminal.
Why, then, didn't the video also include footage of the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol? Surely that counts as a glaring example of disrespect for law enforcement, and it's more relevant and timely than decades-old footage of civil unrest from Toronto, Canada, and Kyiv, Ukraine, both of which were included in Aldean's music video.
Justice Brennan concluded his opinion on the flag burning case this way: "Our decision is a reaffirmation of the principles of freedom and inclusiveness that the flag best reflects, and of the conviction that our toleration of criticism such as Johnson's is a sign and source of our strength. It is the Nation's resilience, not its rigidity, that Texas sees reflected in the flag."
Just as right-wing Bud Light drinkers are not secure enough in their manhood to countenance a transgender influencer even holding one of their shit beers, so-called patriots sing about beating up on those who sully their magic "America Fuck Yeah!" cloth.
We cling desperately to symbols precisely when we cannot admit to ourselves that we've lost faith.
Far from any kind of anthem of authentic pride or passion, Aldean's hit is a "hillbilly elegy"—a swan song for a communitarian hinterland that's been all but lost to job outsourcing, pollution, addiction and suburban sprawl.
And you can't blame flag-burners for that.