I see these stories pop up every once in awhile. This time, a possibly drunk woman took a man's Trump/Make America Great Again hat while in a Mexican food restaurant.
It is a shame most Americans have never understood the flag burning/desecration cases (which personally represented one of those rare times I agreed with Scalia). I recall trying to explain to people that if I buy an American flag, and then want to burn it, it is my right, subject to health and safety rules. You don't have the right to take my flag from me, a flag I own, been given to be my property, or which I have purchased.
The same goes for taking away someone's MAGA hat. I get that, if I was Mexican-American (or Latino/Hispanic) or Muslim, I may feel about a person wearing a MAGA hat the way a Jew may feel in, I emphasize here, 1933/1934 Germany seeing someone with Nazi regalia.* But the fact remains the MAGA hat the fellow was wearing was his private property, and the woman committed an assault as well as she ripped it off his head. If the woman wants to say she is acting with uncivil disobedience against purported rises in fascist, racist (Nazi) behavior, then she has to accept the legal consequences. If Martin Luther King, Jr. can go to jail for civil disobedience for a just cause, then this woman ought to accept what has happened to her, which is being arrested for her behavior.
This is why I joined with Scalia in recognizing flag burners had a First Amendment right, but I wanted Scalia to be more clear than he was. I wanted Scalia to squarely say: You have a right to burn, desecrate, or discard your own flag you own or purchase; and with burning or other desecration, subject to health and safety rules. You do NOT have the right to take someone else's flag, or a flag not belonging to you, to burn or discard. The political commentary at the time of the two Supreme Court decisions never made this point, either, which is why I think this woman thought she was Rick Monday (not that she would know at this point who Monday was), and she was going to save America by ripping the hat off that older white guy's head.**
* I recognize the need to use Nazi comparisons sparingly, and cautiously. It is why I say 1933/34, before the Final Solution, before the crematoria, before Kristallnacht. As Yale historian Timothy Snyder says, however, it remains important to note and perhaps morally correct to respond to a tyrannical trend before it proceeds too far.
** Rick Monday was a former Major League Baseball player who, when playing for the Chicago Cubs at Dodger Stadium, ran over to two guys who had illegally entered the field of play during a ballgame, and began trying to set the flag they owned on fire. Monday ran over and scooped up the flag to protect the flag from burning. What Monday did was in violation of the rule Scalia pronounced, but the two young men were already violating the law, and Monday could have easily tried to tackle one or both of them, as they were not going away quietly. Monday chose to take the flag from them, as the guards were coming over to apprehend the fellows. Again, Monday's act was a violation of the law, but, as the maxims of jurisprudence tell us, the law disregards trifles. No D.A. would ever arrest Monday for that act, especially as it was not an assault, though Monday's own comments at the time showed a mindset which mirror the woman's mindset who pulled off the man's MAGA hat. And the two fellows who had run onto the field at Dodger Stadium? If they tried to sue Monday for taking their flag, they would most likely have been barred from gaining any relief for damages or anything else, based upon applicaion of the equitable doctrine of "unclean hands," where one's inequitable conduct relevant to the incident in which they sue stops them from being able to recover. Fun Fact: Monday was later traded to the Dodgers, and eventually became a color commentator for the team.
