Tuesday, June 27, 2006
Flag Burning Amendment: Politicians in Search of Bogies
Are we naive ?
The WMD cow has been milked dry. The President went on the bully pulpit to speak about the evils of same-sex marriage but The Marriage Protection Amendment went down like a rock in the Senate. Now the champions of freedom and democracy, the guardians of American virtues are getting ready to revive Constitutional amendment to prohibit flag burning. The timing is right. July 4th is around the corner. Some Democrats, including Senator Diane Feinstein of California, are with the Republicans on this one. Hillary Clinton is trying to take a middle ground.
Dana Milbank in the Post: "The naive among us may have trouble appreciating how four flag-burning episodes would constitute a constitutional crisis. But the men and women of the Senate, ever alert to emerging threats, are on the case."
- "I think it's important to focus on the basic fact that the text of the First Amendment, the text of the Constitution, the text of the Bill of Rights is not involved," Specter argued. The Judiciary Committee chairman did not explain how he could add 17 words to the Constitution without altering its text."
I am a naturalized citizen. I love America and respect the flag but I remain unconvinced about the need for Constitutional amendment. It is a non-issue, a case of jingoism. By far the best piece of writing on this subject is in The New Yorker by Hendrik Hertzberg. Mr. Hertzberg's For Which It Stands is in the print edition dated July 6, 2006 and it appeared in the on-line edition on June 26, 2006.
- "The flag is not a piece of cloth, any more than the Constitution is a piece of paper; and the flag’s sacredness is not damaged when a piece of cloth representing it is burned or trampled or used as an autograph book, any more than the Constitution can be damaged by the destruction of a printed copy. But the Constitution can and would be damaged, to the nation’s shame, by the addition of something as inimical to its spirit as the flag-desecration amendment. One may safely assume that most of the sixty-six senators—fifty-two Republicans and fourteen Democrats—who at this writing are listed as supporting the amendment do not seriously regard it as a good, let alone a necessary, idea. Its Republican supporters intend to use it aggressively while its Democratic supporters intend to use it defensively, but for both the support is a by-product of negative campaigning. (Intellectual corruption, like the venal variety, is no stranger to either party, even if, in the present era, both varieties are more common among Republicans.) “Providence,” Lord Bryce, the laboratories-of-democracy chap, once remarked, “has under its special care children, idiots, and the United States of America.” The kids are still all right, but unless thirty-four senators hold firm Providence may no longer be able to indulge the second without harming the third."
