Opening a constitutional Pandora’s Box

July 22, 2005

Slowly but surely, a constitutional amendment to ban flag burning continues to gather support in the Senate. As of today, the measure is up to 57 co-sponsors.

If passed and ratified, the amendment would, obviously, be the first time in American history that the Constitution’s Bill of Rights has been undermined. It’s not uncommon for a civil libertarian to argue that this is a radically dangerous precedent to set — once write an exception to the First Amendment into constitutional stone, it’ll be easier to do it again and again. So-called conservatives dismiss this as a slippery-slope argument.

Is it? Patrick H. Brady is chairman of the Citizens Flag Alliance, which is a leading activist group supporting the proposed amendment. To hear him tell it, the concerns of civil libertarians about opening the flood gates are well founded.

“[T]his is about rights: the right of the people to protect their flag, the right of the majority to rule, the right of the people to define their Constitution. And beyond the flag, this issue spills over into the right to protect our children from pornography, the right to own property, to pray, to post the Ten Commandments, and to say the Pledge of Allegiance.

“If we can recapture our flag, we will have begun a march to recapture our Constitution.”

In other words, once the First Amendment has been undercut with this flag-burning measure, proponents of this nonsense have a few other items on their wish list that they’re going after.

Something for senators to consider before they vote on this.

capture the flag? Isn’t that some schoolyard game played by pre-teens?

  • This needs 2/3 of the senate to pass, right? Right?

    Right, which means they’ll need 67 votes. All of the head-counts I’ve seen shows them with 65. That’s awfuly close, of course, and suggests there isn’t a vote to spare.

  • There you have it: the tyranny of the majority. “The right of
    the majority to rule,” Patrick Brady says, the scariest words
    one could ever hear. Makes a mockery of what the Founders
    accomplished with the Constitution. They were well aware
    of the tyranny of the majority. But the American people aren’t.
    And that kind of sentiment is shared by most, tragically. They
    simply don’t understand.

    We are doing a louzy job of teaching our children in schools
    about the Constitution. In a recent poll, only 14% knew that
    freedom of the press was part of the First Amendment. Wanna
    bet even fewer know about the establishment clause?

  • The flag is a symbol.

    Under the guise of “Patriotism,” these senators, Democratic and Republican, are going to amend the Constitution, infringe upon our freedom to dissent from the government in a symbolic way, to protect a symbol.

    Those kids in inner-cities with diseases and no health care aren’t interested in symbols. They want to live. Soldiers fighting in Iraq want to live. So let me know when these senators stop playing with symbols and come back to reality.

  • This is also from the same crowd who say a woman doesn’t have the right to choose. You have the right to own property, but not the right to decide what happens with your own body.

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