Story highlights Penn Jillette: I've burned -- and magically restored -- many US flags on stage

Jillette: The trick is meant to be patriotic and a way to celebrate our freedoms

Penn Jillette, a writer, television host and frequent guest on a wide range of shows, is half of the Emmy Award-winning magic act duo Penn & Teller. His new book, "Presto," comes out in August. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.

(CNN) At the beginning of this century, Teller and I made a TV show in which we traveled around the world watching street magicians. These weren't conjurers who worked for tourists, but the magicians who performed for locals. We spent the nights in fairly nice hotels, but the days we spent on the streets in real Egypt, real China and real India.

Before this trip, we'd never considered ourselves overly patriotic; we never really thought about it. But we landed back in the USA feeling that John Wayne was a bit too hippie for our taste. Nothing can make you love the USA more than overseas travel.

Penn Jillette

When we got back to doing our own magic show at our own theater in Las Vegas, we wanted to do a new magic trick that would express our newly-understood patriotism. We wanted to publicly salute the American flag and the republic for which it stands.

Overseas, we saw poverty, disease and injustice, but what really struck us, what made us kiss the ground at McCarran airport in Las Vegas, Nevada, United States of America, was freedom. Freedom was what those other countries were so sorely lacking -- freedom that we must never take for granted.

We decided to do a magic trick that would celebrate the freedoms we could now taste so intensely. One of the standard plots in magic is a restoration. You rip, cut, tear or burn something and restore it into one piece.

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