I see a lot of hysteria and apathy battling it out over the impending passage of an amendment to the constitution to repeal the First amendment as it applies to flag burning. I am writing my first diary because an important concept is being lost in all the brouhaha.
While I won't pretend this is the line where future generations will say the United States of America ceased to be a democratic republic and instead became a fascist dictatorship, it is part of a troubling trend. Rep. Conyers put it best when he said this proposal "elevates a symbol of freedom over freedom itself."
I see it in yellow magnets on the backs of gas-guzzling SUVs urging everyone to "Support Our Troops" driven by people who don't want to think about the meat-grinder churning half a world away in their name, or why and how it was started up in the first place, or why so few are willing to walk into the abattoir despite the calls to defend "freedom." I hear it in the brutal smearing as traitorous and disloyal any one who dares suggest that the methods of "interrogation" being used in Guantanamo and unknown and unnumbered other places throughout the world are not what we should be fighting our enemies with, but rather what we should be fighting against. Most of all, I see it in a President who repeats the words "freedom" and "liberty" over and over, but pushes an agenda that elevates power over rights, expediency over due process, demonstrating his utter lack of comprehension of the ideals and principles he has sworn to protect and uphold.
The truth is, of course, that the ideals this nation was founded on, freedom, liberty, and the rights of the individual, all have corresponding responsibilities to family, community, nation, and truth. These responsibilities require debate, argument, and the clash of ideals. But people don't want to think hard about what this nation means, about freedom, liberty, rights and responsibilities, so they make a graven image that they can call "freedom," and make it illegal not to bow down to it. And they may actually have convinced themselves that the symbol is just as good as the real thing, that if you deify thirteen stripes and fifty stars, you are preserving "America."
Soon after the nation was founded the viability of this ongoing civic discussion was tested by a law which prohibited "defaming" the government of the United States. This Act, along with the others that made up the infamous "Alien and Sedition Acts" of 1798, was passed ostensibly to preserve the United States in the face of foreign threats by upholding the dignity of the government, but instead acted to weaken the young Republic, because the political motivation of the Federalist party to crush dissent from the Democratic-Republicans was so blatant and obvious.
Today, I see similar attempts to gain political advantage by placing some things "beyond debate," but I have not seen a similar backlash. Perhaps it is because no one has yet been so foolish as to actually pass an obviously illegal law banning such dissent - the sheep not being ready to be shorn that thoroughly. Perhaps, though, it is because the symbols that are being elevated make easy idols for lazy, irresponsible people who don't want to think about their responsibilities in a free society. As Sallust said, few people actually desire liberty - most are happy with an easy master.
So yes, this matters. Every time we allow an easy-to-worship idol to replace a difficult-to-adhere-to principle, we make it easier for the corrupt and the stupid, the opportunist and the thief, to hide behind symbolic "freedoms," while they take away the real thing.