By a one-vote margin the Senate rejected an Amendment to the Constitution to prohibit the burning of the flag. While I do not like the image of a burning flag personally, the notion that the government can ban us from doing so because it is an expression of anger or vitriol or hate flies in the face of everything I know about our constitution. I will take the flag burning issue a lot more seriously when the Senate bans display of the Confederate flag, the wearing of white or red robes and hoods, the use of the swastika, the shaving of one's head as a display of racial superiority (how exactly DOES that work?)
My good and brilliant friend Scott emailed me in the wee hours about this:
"The American flag stands for the fact that cloth can be very important. It is against the law to let the flag touch the ground or to leave the flag flying when the weather is bad. The flag has to be treated with respect. You can tell just how important this cloth is because when you compare it to people, it gets much better treatment. Nobody cares if a homeless person touches the ground. A homeless person can lie all over the ground all night long without anyone picking him up, folding him neatly and sheltering him from the rain."
"School children have to pledge loyalty to this piece of cloth every morning. No one has to pledge loyalty to justice and equality and human decency. No one has to promise that people will get a fair wage, or enough food to eat, or affordable medicine, or clean water, or air free of harmful chemicals. But we all have to promise to love a rectangle of red, white, and blue cloth.
Betsy Ross would be quite surprised to see how successful her creation has become. But Thomas Jefferson would be disappointed to see how little of the flag's real meaning remains."
So send me your comments about this, and I will post them.
I agree with you wholeheartedly. I would never burn the flag, because I think it represents the sacrifices of our young men and women. However, a country that truly believes in liberty and freedom should not follow the example of nations like Iran and Saudi Arabia.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you... we should respect our flag... but to a person who must work to feed his or her children, or those who have no health care for their kids, flag burning has to be a non issue. As to the confederate flag.. the fact that we don't fly the stars and bars as our national flag should mean that slavery was abolished in the US... Check the labels in your clothing. Made by off shore slaves.
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