Playing Politics With the Flag

Playing Politics With the Flag

June 19, 2006

The U.S. Congress is closer than ever to passing a constitutional amendment that would criminalize desecration of the U.S. flag. If successful, it will mark the first time in 214 years that the Bill of Rights has been restricted by a constitutional amendment, and it will place the United States among a select group of nations that have banned flag desecration, including Cuba, China, Iran, and Iraq under Saddam Hussein. The amendment has already been approved by the necessary two-thirds majority in the House of Representatives. Now, aided by a handful of Democrats, the amendment has gathered 66 votes in favor, just one shy of passage. "Whether advocates can find the 67th vote to send the flag amendment to the states for ratification remains unclear." The Senate vote is expected next week. Take a stand now by signing up with Veterans Defending the Bill of Rights.

• The First Amendment is the bedrock of our democracy. Defacing a flag is an act that most Americans find offensive and outrageous. It is also "an act of protected speech under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution," as established by the Supreme Court in Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397 (1989), and reaffirmed in U.S. v. Eichman, 496 U.S. 310 (1990). Defending freedom of speech is easy when the speech is agreeable to all. A true test of the First Amendment comes when you must defend freedom of speech precisely for those views one finds offensive and outrageous. As former Secretary of State Colin Powell has said, "I would not amend that great shield of democracy to hammer a few miscreants. The flag will be flying proudly long after they have slunk away."
  
  
• Congress is once again focusing their efforts on a nonproblem. Amendment supporters seek to restrict the Bill of Rights despite the fact that they "cannot point to a single instance of anti-American flag burning in the last 30 years," as the New York Times notes. "The video images that the American Legion finds so offensive to veterans and other Americans are either of Vietnam-era vintage or from other countries." Sen. Bob Bennett (R-UT), who opposes the amendment, has argued, "I don't want to amend the Constitution to solve a nonproblem. People are not burning the flag."
  
  
• Weakening the Bill of Rights will do nothing to protect our men and women in uniform. Supporters of the amendment often invoke the sacrifice of our soldiers as a reason to ban flag burning. But as 23-year Navy veteran and American Progress fellow Lawrence Korb has written, Congress could help our veterans much more "by resisting the draconian measures advocated by the Bush administration that adversely impact our current and future veterans." Instead, many of the same conservatives pushing for the amendment have tried or succeeded in increasing veterans' health care costs, reducing hostile fire pay and family separation pay, closing commissaries and schools on military bases throughout our country, and many other draconian measures against our military.