Close Call In The Senate

I have never burned an American flag, and I don't foresee the desire to do so. Why burn a piece of cloth? It doesn't generate much heat, and you can't cook over it as the flame lasts only moments. All the burning a flag does is make people angry.

But that's the point, isn't it? Burning the flag is an act of protest. It is a symbolic act designed and intended to make a point. Prohibitng flag burning is prohibiting symbolic behavior. Why would we do such a thing?

By a one vote margin, the United States Senate rejected a measure that would have sent to the states for ratificaton a proposed Constitutional Amendment against flag desecration. Had the amendment been passed, it would have become the 28th Amendment. Put another way, we were one vote short of re-entering the Middle Ages.

Somehow I do not doubt that the Amendment would be approved by the states. What lawmaker wants to be accused of not supporting America in this time of never-ending war?

But the flag amendment is the American equivalent of jihad. Take something sublime and beautiful and make it a concrete expression of something small. Islam's message of submission becomes a call to bloodlust; the American commitment to freedom of expression becomes the freedom merely to conform.

Those Senators who voted against the Amendment are now being targeted by flag-waving nutcases. Protect the flag, they say. We'll remember who voted against this amendment, they warn.

Who will protect the rest of us from these literal-minded creeps?  Trust and obey, they cried. America first, along with a heaping helping of God's word. America! Love it or leave it, they cried. All the while they drove American values from our midst, and into a sea of fear and hatred.

We dodged a bullet yesterday. Domestic terrorism, flag-waving style.

Comments

[KipEsquire]

Why assume it has to be a piece of cloth? I see no reason why the defeated amendment could not have enabled legislation criminalizing the destruction of postcards with pictures of a flag, or Flash animations of burning flags on computer screens, or ice cream cakes with icing flags.

[Norm Pattis]

Kip:

As always, good point. I wondered what would happen if someone burned a facsimile flag -- 49 stars and one fewer stripe than regulation. Possibilities are endless.

[Ann]

Right on.