Flag Desecration Amendment

27 June, 2007

This month our nation celebrates it’s two hundred and thirtieth anniversary as a free nation, and a free people, under the law. We have the oldest essentially unchanged government in the world. Our political system has been copied in part by many other nations through the years. We are presently the worlds only superpower.

The colors on our flag symbolize the patriotic ideals and spiritual qualities of the citizens of our country. The red stripes proclaim the courage and integrity of American men and boys and the self-sacrifice and devotion of American mothers and daughters, while the white stripes stand for liberty and equality for all. Blue is the blue of heaven, loyalty, and faith. Fifty stars signal the union, one for each of the fifty sovereign states in the greatest constitutional republic the world has ever known. The flag of our nation represents the eternal principles of liberty, justice, and humanity. It is the embodiment of American freedoms: freedom of speech, religion, assembly, the press, and the sanctity of the home. Our flag is as old as the nation, and is the living symbol of the nation's law: the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights. We have only one symbol that identifies our country, our nation, and our people. And that is our flag, instantly recognized around the world as the embodiment of this country.

Few Americans can watch the wartime film showing Japanese soldiers on Corregidor tearing down our flag without feeling a surge of anger, nor help but feel a burst of pride when seeing the famous photo of the US Marines raising the flag over bloody Iwo Jima. Americans have, over the last two centuries, paid a terrible price for our ongoing struggle against tyranny, as symbolized in that flag.

In years past it was a great honor for an American soldier to be selected to carry his regiments national colors. In it’s various manifestations it has led American soldiers into battle from Lexington and Concord to the streets of Baghdad and Kabul. It flies over public buildings and private homes. It’s displayed in the offices of government officials, schoolrooms, and courtrooms, symbolizing Abraham Lincoln's philosophy: "A government of the people, by the people, for the people."

A wide assortment of protesters have also recognized the symbology of the American flag. Whenever they imagine we’ve slighted them, done something they don’t like, or as it currently appears, we haven’t adopted their religion, they throw another riot and burn our flag. Our home grown protestors have used the same tactic, attacking the US flag in a fit of pique whenever they don’t get their way.

While I generally disagree with violent political protest I can understand the frustration behind it. However, this is not France, where riots are a normal form of political campaigning. This is not Africa, where a mob is the government. Nor is this a South American country where governments change at the whim of a screaming mob. This is the United States of America after all, where we vote with a ballot, not a bullet. There is no place for violence in our political process, nor is there any conceivable excuse for American citizens to attack the ideals for which this nation stands, as symbolized by our flag.

And once again our Congress has failed to protect our flag from desecration. The excuse is that a flag desecration amendment would violate our first amendment guarantee to freedom of speech and expression. Yet rioters smashing windows, overturning cars, and burning American flags can hardly be described as free speech. Explain to me just how having the US flag sewn to the seat of ones trousers could be anything but an expression of total distain for our people and our nation. Desecrating our flag is no more free speech than is a child’s temper tantrum when he does not instantly get something he wants. A flag desecration amendment will not completely stop such activities, but it certainly will demonstrate that such behavior is socially unacceptable in this country.

I urge everyone to write not only their own congressional representatives, but all sitting congressmen, loudly (and legally), protesting the failure of congress to protect the symbol of our nation, and all that it stands for. Ask your friends and relatives, wherever they live, to do the same. If our congressmen are so concerned about the rights of protestors, perhaps a couple of hundred million protests against their not protecting our flag will get their attention.