I consider myself a pretty patriotic fellow. I love my country, I admire the principles under which it was founded and operates. I do think we have something very special here, and, if I were so called, I’d be willing to put myself in harm’s way to protect it and its people.
I find flag burning to be, at best, juvenile, at worst, an insult to those principles and people and the folk who have sacrificed so much to make it possible to burn that flag.
But to my mind, one of the very principles of this country is, in fact, that if someone says or does something we disagree with, even vehemently, we either ignore them or engage them in debate to point out what a doofus they are. We don’t simply make their dissent illegal.
So, frankly, I’m pleased as punch that the Senate failed to ratify a proposed constitutional amendment that would allow Congress to ban burning the US flag. I’m appalled that it came within one vote of passing a two-thirds majority. And I’m disgusted at the Republican leadership that decided to trot this out as an election year wedge issue (along with the Democrats
who trotted along behind them).
Flag burning “is obscene, painful and unpatriotic,” Sen. Daniel K. Inouye (D-Hawaii), who lost an arm in World War II, said in a floor speech yesterday. “But I believe Americans gave their lives in the many wars to make certain that all Americans have a right to express themselves — even those who harbor hateful thoughts.”
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) summarized the proponents’ views. The flag’s special symbolic status, she said, makes its desecration different from holding a sign denouncing the president. Burning an American flag in anger, she said, is “conduct, not speech” because the flag is “the symbol of our democracy, our shared values, our commitment to justice, our remembrance to those who have sacrificed to defend these principles.”
[…] The debate divided senators along unusual lines. Opposing the amendment was McConnell, the Senate’s second-ranking GOP leader, and Bennett, a quiet, mainstream Republican. Democratic supporters included Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.) and Sen. Evan Bayh (Ind.), a presidential hopeful. Maryland’s Democratic senators voted against the amendment and Virginia’s Republican senators voted for it.
I disagree vehemently with Sen. Feinstein on this. Or, rather, I would ask where she would draw the line. Would burning the Great Seal of the United States also count as such? How about an effigy of Uncle Sam? Or a copy of the Bill of Rights? Or a picture of the president, the Lincoln Memorial, or the Iwo Jima memorial?
Symbols mean things. But speech is full of symbols, and setting aside one particular (and, so to speak, inflammatory) political expression as being beyond the pale not only makes no sense, but sets a horribly dangerous precedent — one that someone, sooner or later, would latch onto.
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
Well said. How can they not see that action taken against a symbol is an expression of an idea? And therefore, in the abstract, “speech”?
It just makes me sad that so many of our elected officials don’t understand this.
I don’t know if I’m more worried that they don’t understand it, or that they understand it but are taking a politically convenient path.
What pisses me off is seeing people with flags on their cars. People who leave their flags out in the rain and mud, any weather, all ragged and falling to bits. While I think a constitutional amendment would be going too far, I feel that treating the flag with such contempt is far worse than burning it as an expression of free speech and should be punished. At least, people who are burning the flag (or wrapping their naked bodies in it, a la Madonna) treat the flag as a thing which has true, deep meaning. It’s the people who are letting their flags rot in the name of ***PATRIOTISM*** that ought to be punished. Pull them over and give them tickets–a great fundraiser over the Fourth of July, no?
That’s a good point, as summed up by the truism, the opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s apathy. Folks who casually mistreat the flag are more disrespectful of the symbol than those those who willfully use it for protest.