Poll: Half of Republicans say you should lose your citizenship if you desecrate the flag

Seven in 10 Republicans are in favor of making it illegal to burn or otherwise desecrate the American flag, finds a new YouGov/Cato Institute poll previewed by Reason on Tuesday. Half say you should lose your citizenship if you do the desecrating, an idea President Trump suggested in 2016.

The survey also probed American attitudes on First Amendment rights more broadly. About one-third of Republican respondents said they backed a ban on offensive public statements about police and the military, and half of Democrats similarly agreed the "government should prevent people from engaging in hate speech against certain groups in public." Slightly more than half (53 percent) of Democrats also said that to defend racists' free speech rights is just as bad as "holding racist views yourself."

On the subject of press freedom, Republicans and other poll participants differed significantly. Two in 3 Republicans said journalists are "an enemy of the American people," but only 1 in 3 poll respondents in aggregate said the same. Likewise, half of Republicans said the media has too much freedom in the United States, but only about a third (31 percent) of total respondents concurred.

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