Recently, Donald Trump signed an executive order banning flag burning. In reality, the administration worded it in such a way to try to minimize First Amendment challenges — given Texas v. Johnson found in 1989 that burning flags is protected free speech. Much as when flag burners have been charged with vandalism or theft for burning various flags in the past, the language of the executive order focuses on cases where there is more at play than simple freedom of expression, seeking to ramp up enforcement there.
However, we increasingly live in a society that is seeking to curtail free speech. You can see this with how payment processors are increasingly cracking down on various forms of content, puritanically pushing titles out of digital storefronts. LGBTQ+ content is often now labeled “adult” by default, even for simply depicting the kinds of heterosexual relationships prevalent in media. Even if this executive order is very careful not to cross the line, it steps right up to it in a time when there is an increasing ideological mounting of the troops at the border, so to speak. Our freedoms are increasingly under siege.
This is the sociopolitical context of my on-chain art piece, Freedom of Speech. The audience may mint American flag tokens for a small fee of less than a dollar, though those flags are immediately burned — metaphorically speaking, anyway. The tokens still exist at the zero address, not accessible by anyone, but this is considered “burnt” in the lexicon of blockchains. These American flags can only exist as an expression of freedom and the contradictions it bears: there are few things more American than using your First Amendment rights to criticize America.
In reality, there is no risk to the user under this executive order: you buy the flag that is burned, even if it all happens in one transaction — and it is less likely that they would ever focus on digital acts such as this in the first place. But the freedoms we hold dear are under siege, and the only way to protect what the flag stands for is to stand up for our right to destroy it.
Freedom of Speech also challenges norms in the NFT space. There is no room for speculation. The art is destroyed in the same transaction it is created. There is no cap on the supply — our rights should never run out. What you get is participation in a piece of conceptual art and a digital protest, and that in and of itself has intangible value. Each flag is rendered as a fully on-chain SVG, existing entirely as code. Even if the token is theoretically destroyed, a record of the image will exist forever through the smart contract.
While many clamor for ownership of prized collections, Freedom of Speech is something no one can own — but that we can all share together, if we can defend it. Decentralized technologies like blockchains will undoubtedly prove critical for protecting our freedom in the times to come. Though the flag is gone, something more intangibly important remains in its wake.