Now that the House has approved a constitutional amendment on flag “desecration,” constitution huggers have to hope that the Senate can come through and block this nonsense once again. It looks like it’ll be extremely close, with literally one or two votes making the difference.
When the Senate considered the issue in 1995 and 2000, the amendment received 63 votes, four shy of the threshold.
“We count 65 votes [in the Senate] based on voting records and talks,” said Marty Justis, executive director of the Citizens Flag Alliance, which has been lobbying Congress to pass the amendment.
They’ll need 67 votes for passage. The ACLU’s Terri Ann Schroeder said proponents may not get those last two votes, but added, “[I]f one person who opposes doesn’t vote, we are within one. And when we are within one, that changes the dynamics, and we are afraid of switchers. We cannot guarantee that we will win this vote [in the Senate]. My concern is that we will wake up the next morning and say, ‘Oops, did we just amend the 1st Amendment?’ ”
It sure sounds like we’re moving very close to doing just that. Keep in mind, this would be the first time the Bill of Rights is revised to restrict rather than expand freedom of expression. The party that claims the mantle of “limited government” thinks that’s a great idea.
I have to admit, watching the floor debate yesterday, and hearing some of the truly breathtaking remarks offered by supporters of the amendment, I kept thinking about a picture I saw last week.
The kid in the middle is 14 and lives in a small town in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. The gentleman to the right is a veteran who’s active with his local chapter of the American Legion. And as far as 286 members of the U.S. House are concerned, they should probably be considered criminals.
This picture was taken at an American Legion Flag Day service at which over 300 flags were destroyed. Similar events are held every year, all over the country. Burning the flag is the proper way of disposing of damaged or unserviceable flags. As Atrios noted, it’s even part of the official U.S. Flag code.
I realize that lawmakers, no matter how unbalanced, have no interest in prosecuting the patriotic Americans in the picture above, but I honestly want advocates of the amendment to explain how, exactly, they plan to create a distinction between good people who burn flags out of reverence and bad people who burn flags in protest. The amendment wants to make one’s thoughts the standard for criminality — and that will never work.
Even if lawmakers were to create some kind of exception for flag-burners who are disposing of damaged or unserviceable flags, it wouldn’t resolve the problem. Protestors could merely express their anger by — you guessed it — burning damaged or unserviceable flags.