Ethics

Flag Burning? Seriously?

By Ed Brayton

No, this is not a repeat. You didn't wake up in 1989 all over again. Put away the acid-washed Levi's and the Roxette CD. Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa is sponsoring a resolution to pass a constitutional amendment outlawing flag burning. And he defended it in an interview recently:

We think that burning a flag is desecration of the flag and that we should not desecrate the flag that there's been a lot of bloodshed by our veterans and people in uniform to protect the flag as a symbol of our country.

So it simply says that desecration of a flag is not protected by the First Amendment because the First Amendment was not written -- if you read the debate in 1790 -- the First Amendment was not written to protect nonverbal speech. It was to protect verbal speech and, more importantly, political speech.

So you weren't put in jail when you talked against the government as you were in England that the particular time. And so we want to make sure that we get the Constitution back to its original intent before the Supreme Court screwed it up.

Full post as published by Dispatches from the Culture Wars on May 19, 2009 (boomark / email).