THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, July 3, 1995 TAG: 9507030043
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Guy Friddell
LENGTH: Medium: 59 lines
Soon the U.S. Senate will be debating whether to adopt a constitutional amendment prohibiting the burning of the Stars and Stripes.
The flag - any long-standing flag - is a potent symbol. Southerners can attest to that. An elderly relative, who heard from my grandmother's lips of Sherman's incendiary march through Georgia, was unable ever after to stand under the flag of the United States.
When many of her generation mentioned ``The War,'' it was not of World War I but of what they called the War Between the States.
For some it is with us yet. Maynard Jackson, former Atlanta mayor, now head of the Olympic Committee, is trying to have any vestige of the Stars and Bars removed from the state flag flying over Georgia's Capitol lest it embarrass athletes coming from all over the world.
The Lost Cause was stained irredeemably by slavery, but being a stout states' righter, I leave the issue to Georgians, some of whom tend to be a wild, unruly lot, as I know from my own outbursts.
On flag burning, I side with the protesters. Before you throw down the paper and yell, ``Irma, he's at it AGAIN,'' give me your ear.
To thousands, the flag is the symbol, well nigh the soul, of this country for which loved ones died. They can't bear anyone slurring it.
When at my father's funeral, someone handed me, tightly folded, the flag that had covered his casket, I held, for a moment, the laughing sailor boy. So my heart is with those who revere the flag. But I differ with them on flag burners.
Some flag burners are on ego trips. But then, so are many congressmen. And others of us.
Some dissidents, out of love of country, seeking to redress a wrong, would awaken the majority by striking at what is most dear. So they burn the flag.
America's founders understood how difficult it is to parcel out dissenting groups, or at least without hearing them all out. Dissidents themselves, the founders devised the First Amendment to protect us all, even the measliest.
Dissent erupts at critical junctures. If at times it comes from a seeming scruffy lot, that should not deter us from weighing their ideas. The words from plain Tom Paine, oft deemed extremist by his peers, still come to us loud and clear.
What troubles me more than flag burners are self-serving politicians who wrap themselves in the flag.
Looking back in history, we wonder how the majority failed to see what the dissidents pointed out.
In the 1988 Republican convention in Dallas, hell-bent on an assignment, I rushed by a flag burner, meaning to return, and didn't.
We had best pause to examine what has seized some dissenters that out of love they dare to appear fools in the swarming majority.
And in the mounting national debate, we should not disregard out of hand those who have the nerve to defend the right of dissent. by CNB