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Yesterday, The U.S. House passed a Constitutional amendment against flag burning. That's right, they're trying to make burning a piece of cloth with some stars and stripes on it illegal. They're not just trying to pass a law, they're trying to make it part of the constitution.
What this is all about - and I think it's pretty obvious when you think about it - is making laws that stop dissent. These people don't care about desecration of the flag in and of itself.
For example, as AmericaBlog points out,
Rolling Papers,
Dog Sweaters,
Bikinis,
Porn stars who ran for Governor of California and attended Republican fund raisers and want to have sex with the Bush twins, nude, draped in the flag,
Napkins, presumably to wipe patriotic BBQ sauce off your face.
None of these are illegal, and they probably never will be. This isn't about desecration of the flag. It's about the fact that anyone who would desecrate the flag is dissenting against the government in most cases, and this is an excuse to punish those people for dissenting without saying that's what you're punishing them for. It's disgusting, it's horrible, and I hope that if this does pass the Senate, the States won't ratify it. The fact that this is even being debated in Congress, much less that it passed in the House, is very telling as to the degree of control they're trying to have over us.
If this actually makes it to amendment status, any of you who are interested are welcome to come with me to burn a flag in a public square. I'm not kidding. This sort of ridiculous control has to be met with serious outcry, and I'm not opposed to being arrested for a little civil disobedience in the name of civil liberties.
UPDATE: I just read the actual bill, and it proposes an amendment that says the following:
`The Congress shall have power to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States.'
In other words, the amendment would allow Congress to pass a law that prohibits flag burning. The amendment itself wouldn't make flag burning illegal. Actually, it's not just flag burning (which I guess was obvious), but flag 'desecration.' That's interesting. First the amendment has to pass 2/3 of House (which it just did) and 2/3 Senate, then 3/4 of the States, THEN a law has to pass both houses of Congress, then be signed by the President.
My question is, what makes a flag a flag besides being cloth with the depiction of the flag on it?
I mean, if you buy a flag at Walmart, does it have to be registered as a "real flag" or something? As far as I know, people just make flags and other people buy em, in which case a flag you get at Walmart wouldn't be any different than a flag tshirt you get at Walmart.
It's an interesting question, and one I don't have an answer to, but it seems to me that this flag desecration thing is about desecrating the symbol itself, no matter where you got it. Either way, it has some strange implications.
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