The proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution to make it a federal offense to desecrate the American flag has failed by one vote. An even greater failure is the fact that our lawmakers sought to pass the measure.
I’m not a big fan of flag burning. I’ve never burned a flag, and I have no desire to. I don’t like seeing my flag burn. But the idea that we need to make it illegal in order to prevent it means that we’ve already failed. What we should be doing is encouraging and teaching a mindset that doesn’t want to burn our flag.
An amendment to our Constitution on something this trivial, trivializes the extraordinary document itself and the rights guaranteed therein. It is like Prohibition all over again, and we all remember how well that went, don’t we?
1 comment:
just got here via idle disconnected cruising of the net. Anent your remarks on the flag desecration amendment, I am wholeheartedly on your side. In addition, I do not think there is a single lawmaker in support of the (failed) amendment who would be competent to draft one that would work. Even the simplest aspects would need definitions that would hold up. For example, suppose a cake decorator frosted a cake with an image of the flag, and another person ate it. Would there be a desecration issue? Would a flag image be permitted on the cake in the first place? What of the rah-rah ideologue who has a small flag on his radio antenna, and then drives around in the rain with it, or drives around at night without proper flag illumination, or drives around until the little flag is a faded shabby tatter?
tvkoehler
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