I'm looking right now at
A joint resolution proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States authorizing Congress to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States. It's old news, but I'm looking anyway because it is still active legislation that looks like it might actually go through. And call me naive, but my alarm gongs are going off on this one.
(Continued below the fold)
First off, and less important, is the term "desecration." I don't like that particular word being used out of context. Since when has the American flag been a religious icon? It's a symbol, yes, of a land that I think we all love. And people have died to be able to hoist that flag over our land. (And over foreign land - I'm thinking both of Okinawa and its 9-11 twin as I type this.)
But to use the term "desecration" to describe the act of burning the flag? No, that's too far. One desecrates a cross (or a pentacle) by flipping it upside down. One desecrates a Torah text by using it for other purposes. One can desecrate a mosque by letting a pig loose inside the grounds, or a Native American burial ground by building atop it. One cannot desecrate a flag, even by burning it - how many flags have been shredded in battle? Is that desecration? Not only is it torn, it's probably bloodstained, and might be burnt, all with hostile intent. But it was never sacred - it cannot be desecrated.
But that's just semantics, and while it has me annoyed it's not what truly angers me. That dubious honor goes to the concept of the bill itself - reading between the lines, it's the prohibition of the act of burning the American flag.
Now, burning the flag is a right. It is a First Amendment issue - the right to burn the flag is a symbolic form of political protest. It cannot be disrespectful to the soldiers who died "defending the Constitution from all foreign enemies" if we are taking up their cause and partnering with them in "defending the Constitution from domestic enemies." What is proposed - reported back to the Senate after going through committee without amendment - is a form of censorship, a breach of the Constitution's First Amendment - in fact, it is proposed as a Constitutional Amendment in and of itself!
Congress (the people's branch of the government) taking away that right of political protest is yet another way that the American people are castrating themselves in regards to their civil freedoms. No amount of House debates, no amount of Senatorial filibustering, should allow the American people to take this away from themselves.
I call myself a patriot. I love my country and all the highest ideals that the American flag stands for - truth, trust, tolerance, integrity, honor, and above all FREEDOM. I love the values and virtues of the Constitution and of the Declaration of Independence - that all men are created equal, with equal rights under their respective Deity(ies) to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." I compare America and the life I know to much of the rest of the world and I know that I am lucky to be here.
But I am saddened that I come of age into an America that seems to have forgotten these great ideals, under a President and an administration that never knew these concepts and seeks to use this symbol to clothe its bigotry, its religious bias and and its self-centered, wanton destructiveness in the Stars and Stripes.
If the only way to unmask this President's true colors is to burn the "flag leaf" off of the leadership, then as I see it every patriotic American has the right and the duty to do so.
Otherwise, this government truly becomes "the wolf in sheep's clothing."