Not very. It is a useful marker to say where I come from in cases, such as international conferences, where it amy be in doubt. I have no problem with people using it, but I find that people who use it a lot and get heated about it tend not to be "my sort of person". (UK) People burning the flag etc. doesn't upset me particularly. OK, I get the point that they want to be positively rude to me, but it is no worse than giving the finger/two fingers or sticking out the toungue.

No ~ it's a piece of material and it's not even pretty!!!

Not really. I sometimes think it looks 'tacky', and perhaps gives people from other countries a bad impression. ('Union Jack' or 'George Cross').

Yes! I love the Aussie flag!

YES....... The United States flag is one of the nation's widely recognized and used symbols. Throughout the world it is used in public discourse to refer to the U.S., both as a nation state, government, and set of policies, but also as an ideology and set of ideas. Many understand the flag to represent the freedoms and rights guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution and its Bill of Rights and perhaps most of all to be a symbol of individual and personal liberty as set forth in the Declaration of Independence. The flag is a complex and contentious symbol, around which emotions run high. In terms of the symbolism of the design itself, a book about the flag published by the Congress in 1977 states: "The star is a symbol of the heavens and the divine goal to which man has aspired from time immemorial; the stripe is symbolic of the rays of light emanating from the sun."George Washington is credited for saying: "We take the stars from Heaven, the red from our mother country, separating it by white stripes, thus showing that we have separated from her, and the white stripes shall go down to posterity representing Liberty." Many people also take the red and white to stand for the blood of those who gave their lives for freedom, and the presumed purity of the freedom ideal, respectively.