Must be one of those affirmative action students

A graduate student in Communications at Louisiana State University was shouted down by a crowd while he read a statement instead of his Facebook-announced burning of an American flag when he failed to get a "local burn permit" from the city.

Mob Chases Would-be Flag Burner From LSU Campus

I can only assume that this student, whose name is Benjamin Haas, is either a high-functioning retard who has been pushed through college and into graduate school in order to fill some sort of affirmative action quota related to "people with disabilities," or he's attended some of the worst colleges in the United States. Including the one he's currently at.

Benjamin Haas: Noted poet, would-be flag-burner,
 and the pride of LSU (okay, maybe not that last bit)

Why else would he want to destroy the symbol of the United States of America and the Constitution that guarantees his freedom of expression--a right his field of study and many future career opportunities revolve around? (The answer is probably that he is intending to go into politics and that's he's one of those beautiful people with the attitude that free speech only applies to those who agree with him. Which, of course, means that real freedom of expression matters jack-all to him.)

It could also be that Haas never intended to burn the American flag in the first place. That thought occurred to me when reading the transcript of his address that was published by the LSU campus paper.

Regardless of what led Haas to not burn the American flag today, here is an amateur video from the "event".



While I despise Haas, I don't have much more respect for the crowd and the mob mentality they exhibited. I love the fact that there appeared to be only a small handful there to support Haas and a hundreds there to protest the promised flag burning, but I would have preferred Haas's drivel being heard. For the very reason expressed in this video (also from Benjamin's Big Day... the partially seen woman is one of the people standing alongside Haas in the other video):



It appears to me that the crowd didn't even give Haas a real opportunity for them to "tell him to shut the fuck up." That's a problem.