Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 20, 1990                   TAG: 9006200364
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: HENRY SCHOLZ
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

MANY HAVE DIED, NOT FOR A FLAG

Many in our nation rightly deplore and are offended by those who would bolster their dissent through the act of burning our flag. For many, outrage is the only emotion possible when it concerns the destruction of our flag, for which so many have fought and died.

But therein lies the fallacy.

No one dies for a flag. Americans untold have sacrificed and died to preserve the ideals and principles of our nation and its Constitution. They have sacrificed and died to preserve a distinctly American form of freedom, one unique to our civilization.

Today, in the era of glasnost and perestroika, the threat to our nation lies not from an overseas adversary, but from insidious evils well-rooted in our own cities and towns. Intolerance, prejudice, ignorance and apathy stand to destroy our great nation.

The strength of this nation emanates from our ability, both past and present, to tolerate, protect and even revere dissent. The apathy that holds us in self-imposed bondage today does more harm than any form of dissent.

Let not the sacrifices and deaths of untold Americans for our freedoms be made meaningless by those who would have us fight the phantom foe, while leaving the real enemy to flourish. Let us not make an icon of our national flag, worshiping a symbol, while forgetting the principles and ideals that serve as the bedrock for our nation.

It is doubtful that our Founding Fathers considered the free-speech provision of the Bill of Rights to apply only to the spoken or printed word. Especially today, in an era of 30-second TV "bites," the visual forms of dissent have as much impact as the spoken or printed word.

Remember that before the organized government and the nation-state, we were revolutionaries. I certainly hope and pray that we never lose our revolutionary heart. It is this that has made our country great and, once lost, will signal our downfall.

Our Founding Fathers would best associate themselves with the statement by Voltaire: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

I would venture that many of them burned their share of Union Jacks.