I am of half Scottish ancestry and I deeply resent the fact that the KKK hijacked the old Scottish custom of cross-burning for their evil purposes.
The fiery cross used to signal the gathering of the clan, often to resist an invasion by the Sassenach (English) or sometimes for social purposes.
However, you say that cross-burning is "the equivalent of holding someone at knife point" and "is essentially a death-threat." The former is so illogical as to be dismissed without comment. The latter may have been true 70 or 80 years ago, but nowadays?
Your comments would have to apply equally to flag-burning, which I believe has been held by the courts to be "freedom of speech."
I imagine some on your editorial board would favor flag-burning (I hope I'm wrong about that) and would say "Oh, but they're completely different."
If burning one symbolic object is a "threat," so is burning another. The flag-burners' "threat" is against our country as a capitalist democracy instead of a socialist dictatorship of the proletariat.
J.E. Williams
UNC-CH Class of 1954
