Okay, this started as a response to Avo’s comment in this thread about flag burning, noting Scott Adams’ address of the issue, but it got long, so, heck, let’s make it a blog post.
My favorite quote from Adams:
It seems to me that the great thing about the flag is that it symbolizes something inherently indestructible: the concept of freedom. You can burn the flag as many times as you want and the concept of freedom is not only still there – it’s stronger. I like that about my flag. I would go so far as to say it’s my flag’s best feature.
Me like.
Another point he makes:
If flag burning becomes illegal, someone is going to start a company that sells flags that are slightly different from American flags – just different enough to be legal to burn. The burnable flags might have 51 stars, or 14 stripes – something like that. The beauty of this concept is that if you got caught burning a real American flag, you could claim it was really just a near-flag. That’s reasonable doubt. No one would ever get convicted.
I remember reading someone’s commentary that because the amendment was so specific, there was very little penumbra to worry about (no “well, the courts will also let people be locked up for desecrating something that isn’t an actual honest-to-gosh American flag”). Aside from the remarkable ability for courts (and, more importantly, law enforcement) to find penumbrae wherever they wish, the flip side to that is just what Adams notes: people will simply burn something that is just as evocative and distressing, but just outside the bounds of the law. Effigies of the President, or of the Statue of Liberty, or copies of the Constitution, or state flags, or a flag with one big white star. If they’re shouting, “Die, Amerikka!” and “Amerikkka is a bunch of poopyheads,” you can’t tell me folks won’t be just as upset.
(I’ll also be waiting to for the first case where an editorial cartoonist who uses a flag in a cartoon that is critical of a governmental action gets hauled into court for it. Even if the case is lost, the chilling effect will be profound.)
Adams also nicely (though not uniquely) lampoons Frist’s comments about the flag being a “national monument,” and how we don’t let folks destroy Mt Rushmore or the Washington Monument.
No, we don’t. But (my observation) if they buy a replica of the Washington Monument at a gift store, there’s no law that prevents them from smashing that replica with a hammer. The point being that the symbol is not the reality (unless we’re talking magic here, or idolatry). A model of the Washington Monument is not the real thing. An effigy or drawing or photograph of George Bush is not the real thing. And the US flag, as a symbol of our nation, its freedoms, and its principles, is not the real thing.
Burning a flag doesn’t cause the entire nation to combust in some huge inferno of sympathetic magic. Nor does it actually harm our freedoms or our principles. It makes people angry, yes, and disgusted and irked and hurt and sad and whatever. So do a lot of things. So does losing a ball game. So does losing a job. So does hearing someone say [insert racial, sexual, religious epithet of your choice]. So does [fill in the politician, pundit, and/or celebrity of your choice] spouting off their typical nonsense. Those things are not, however, illegal per se.
Flag burning amendments are voo-doo idolatry at best, cynical political manipulation of the populace at worst.