Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, June 2, 1995 TAG: 9506030005
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The chief effect of flag-burning as political protest is to draw anger upon the burners, and to place their own cause in a ridiculous light. If they can't make their case in any more coherent way, most people reasonably infer, then flag-burners probably don't have much of a case to make.
Where, then, is the urgent necessity for circumscribing free speech with a constitutional amendment to exclude political flag-burning from the protection of the First Amendment?
Answer: There is no such necessity, except in the minds of politicians who recognize a hot-button issue when they see one, and who are willing to mess with our nation's historic charter for short-term political gain.
That's why, on a party-line vote, Republicans in a House Judiciary subcommittee have approved a proposed amendment to bar "physical desecration" of the flag; why the full committee is expected to approve it; and why the House of Representatives may well send it on to the Senate.
If so, opposition in the upper chamber is likely to be led by Nebraska Democrat Robert Kerrey, who lost a leg in the Vietnam war. "The community's revulsion at those who burn a flag," he has observed, "and the action that follows as a result of that revulsion, is all that we need. It has contained the problem without the government getting involved."
Let's be clear about two things.
First, flag-burning as political speech is what's at issue. The target is not the quiet destruction, by burning or other means, of a flag in one's back yard.
Second, analogies between the proposed amendment and laws against defacing public monuments don't cut it. It already is as much against the law to defile a flag that is not your property as it is to deface a building that you do not own. Similarly, the First Amendment does not nullify trespass laws against entering someone else's private property without permission to burn a flag.
This debate isn't about patriotism. It's about pandering. Flag-burning is deeply, justifiably offensive. But so is much other speech - Ku Klux Klan parades, the more outre of radio shock talk, the rantings of a Louis Farrakhan - that nevertheless falls under First Amendment protection. If offensiveness is to be the criterion for limiting free speech, then the list of items to be amended out of the Constitution's protection will be long indeed.
Respect for the flag can be shown in many ways. One way is to stand fast by the freedoms for which it stands, including the right of a few flag-burners to make fools of themselves.
by CNB