Burn Baby Burn

Last week, the U.S. Senate rejected a constitutional amendment that would ban desecration of the American flag by just a single vote.

While the Senate ultimately made the right decision, why it is that 66 of its members supported such a measure.

The fact that the Senate would even consider such an amendment sends a message to the American people that their elected officials are out of touch with the country.

In a time when nearly 3,000 Americans have lost their lives in an unnecessary war, gas prices are at an all-time high and college graduates are leaving school with an average of $20,000 debt, it is clear that there are more important issues the Senate needs to address.

Throughout this whole debate, Republican lawmakers have stressed that such a constitutional amendment is absolutely necessary because it would serve as a tribute to the men and women who have given their lives for this country. Note that they have given their lives for their country, not merely its flag.

You want to claim this land as the land of the free? Then the symbol of your country cannot just be a flag. The symbol also has to be one of its citizens exercising his right to burn that flag in protest.

This amendment has nothing to do with honoring our soldiers at all. If we want to honor them, we should bring them home, not write into the Constitution that burning a flag is a crime.

Several other members of the Senate have spun the issue in different ways.

From the Senate floor on June 26, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) compared flag desecration to libel and child pornography, forms of expression he said have no "social value."

"Flag burning is a form of expression that is spiteful or vengeful," the five-term senator said. "It is designed to hurt. It is not designed to persuade."
Fortunately Democrats recognize that the issue is one of free speech and expression and not of anything else.

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) sided with the 1989 Supreme Court decision, which voted 5-4 in Texas v. Johnson that flag burning was a political statement and that state laws banning it were unconstitutional.

The First Amendment was designed precisely to protect this sort of expression, Leahy said in a June 28 CNN article.

"The First Amendment never needs defending when it comes to popular speech," Leahy said. "It's when it comes to unpopular speech that it needs defending."