By Paul Gessing
No, it’s not time to run out in your front yard and take the lighter fluid that you’d otherwise use for grilling hot dogs and hamburgers to fry the stars and stripes to a crispy brown. Actually, if our elected leaders have their way over the next few weeks, taking a torch to Old Glory as an act of political disobedience could be outlawed and enshrined in the United States Constitution.
The House of Representatives will be considering just such an amendment this week and the Senate may consider the amendment as soon as next week as Republican leadership in both houses moves to pass this all important protection before the July 4th holiday. Chances are better than ever for the amendment to pass this year since the Legislation has received the necessary two-thirds majority in the House in 1995, 1997, 1999 and 2001, all by more than 300 votes.
Now, five freshmen senators – Richard Burr of North Carolina, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, Jim DeMint of South Carolina, John Thune of South Dakota and David Vitter of Louisiana – who voted for the amendment as House members – will have the chance to push the amendment through the Senate. Prospects for Senate passage look good considering that the Senate in both 1995 and 2000 came up with only 63 votes, four short of the two-thirds majority needed. Now, the Senate’s makeup is more conservative than ever.
The flag amendment is a prime example of the hypocrisy of so-called “conservative” defenders of the Constitution. For the first time since prohibition passed in 1919, the Constitution may be amended by our elected officials to place restrictions on the rights of individuals. Although there is undoubtedly a certain amount of grandstanding and electioneering among some supporters of this effort, the scariest thing is that a majority of the proposed amendment’s supporters really believe that protecting the flag from burning is a top priority for a Congress that never seems to finish its budgets on time and that has proven itself incapable of overseeing America’s Homeland Security and intelligence agencies.
The fact is that The Citizens Flag Alliance, an advocacy group that supports a constitutional amendment outlawing flag burning, reports a decline in flag desecration incidents, with only one this year. Truly, the problem of flag burning is a plague that must be stopped!
As Congressman Ron Paul pointed out during a 2003 debate on passage of a flag burning amendment, one of the very first laws that Red China passed upon assuming control of Hong Kong was to make flag burning illegal. Since that time, they have prosecuted some individuals for flag burning. Our State Department keeps records of how often the Red Chinese persecute people for burning the Chinese flag, as it considers those prosecutions an example of how the Red Chinese violate human rights. Those violations are used against Red China in the argument that they should not have most-favored-nation status. There is just a bit of hypocrisy among those members who claim this amendment does not interfere with fundamental liberties, yet are critical of Red China for punishing those who burn the Chinese flag.
The battle over flag burning is only the most recent, blatant example of conservative shortsightedness over civil liberties and individual freedom. Although I have no immediate plans to engage in the practice of burning the American flag, the fact that our elected representatives are so willing to transform the Constitution from a litany of individual freedoms (that are all-too-often ignored) into a tool that can be used to restrict our rights, is a change which cannot be ignored.
Hopefully, Congress will come to its senses before it passes another freedom-limiting amendment to the Constitution.
Paul Gessing is a Senior Editor of the Free Liberal.