Has anyone else noticed that the House is expected to vote this week on a constitutional amendment banning "desecration" of the American flag? There's not exactly a lot of coverage out there of House Joint Resolution 10 and Senate Joint Resolution 12. Heck, I wouldn't know about it if the American Civil Liberties Union weren't all a-twitter about it.
(Disclosure time: I'm a member of the ACLU -- my card's around here somewhere, even if I don't carry it all the time -- and on the board of my local chapter.)
I think very highly of the American flag. I've been known to get teary-eyed at flag ceremonies and patriotic songs (I'm a sucker for "You're a Grand Old Flag"), and get very upset when folks flout proper flag etiquette by flying Old Glory in the rain, letting it get torn, or using it as mere decoration. But I also think very highly of the Bill of Rights, especially the First Amendment protecting freedom of speech. And I don't think the latter needs to be trashed, or abridged or warped or changed in any way, to protect the former.
And let's face it, any "flag protection" law won't be used to keep good ol' boys from flying those made-in-China non-regulation flags on their pick-em-up trucks until they're unrecognizable rags, nor will it stop retailers from selling flag-motif paper plates and disposable cups (talk about disrespect for the flag). No, the whole point is to create another cudgel to bash that rare creature, a flag-burning dissident. That sort of flag disrespect gets people upset.
Flag-amendment proponents cite a survey saying that 75 percent of the 1,004 adults asked want to change the Constitution to outlaw that particular form of protest. That handful of newspapers, like the Houston Chronicle, that have editorialized against this latest edition of the flag-burning amendment have usually quoted uber-patriot Colin Powell's 1999 declaration:
"The First Amendment exists to ensure that freedom of speech and expression applies not just to that with which we agree or disagree, but also that which we find outrageous.... I would not amend that great shield of democracy to hammer a few miscreants. The flag will still be flying proudly long after they have slunk away."
And long after opportunistic politicos have maligned the flag by trying to wrap themselves in it.