I don't like the proposed amendment to ban flag desecration, and I oppose it. To some that makes me a ahte-America-first-liberal sort of guy -- but that isn't it at all, as many of you have read my condemnations of the America-hating Left (and Right) over the last year. Rather, I am concerned about what will be held to constitute desecration (how about a flag patch on the seat of a pair of pants, or anywhere on Michael moore's body?), and the fact that other much more powerful symbols of this country (the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence) are not covered. And yes, I am concerned about the slippery slope that will exist (not might -- will) if we start tinkering with the bedrock principles of the First Amendment -- heck, it is already hard enough to get Congress and the courts to respect them as it is, as we have seen in cases permitting the regulation of political speech in the name of "campaign finance reform".

Mark Steyn, though, has an interesting take on the matter.

In other words, if the objection to flag desecration is that it's distasteful, tough. Like those apocryphal Victorian matrons who discreetly covered the curved legs of their pianos, the culture already goes to astonishing lengths to veil the excesses of those who are admirably straightforward in their hostility.

If people feel that way, why protect them with a law that will make it harder for the rest of us to see them as they are? One thing I've learned in the last four years is that it's very difficult to talk honestly about the issues that confront us. A brave and outspoken journalist, Oriana Fallaci, is currently being prosecuted for ''vilification of religion,'' which is a crime in Italy; a Christian pastor has been ordered by an Australian court to apologize for his comments on Islam. In the European Union, ''xenophobia'' is against the law. A flag-burning amendment is the American equivalent of the rest of the West's ever more coercive constraints on free expression. The problem is not that some people burn flags; the problem is that the world view of which flag-burning is a mere ritual is so entrenched at the highest levels of Western culture.

Banning flag desecration flatters the desecrators and suggests that the flag of this great republic is a wee delicate bloom that has to be protected. It's not. It gets burned because it's strong. I'm a Canadian and one day, during the Kosovo war, I switched on the TV and there were some fellows jumping up and down in Belgrade burning the Stars and Stripes and the Union Jack. Big deal, seen it a million times. But then to my astonishment, some of those excitable Serbs produced a Maple Leaf from somewhere and started torching that. Don't ask me why -- we had a small contribution to the Kosovo bombing campaign but evidently it was enough to arouse the ire of Slobo's boys. I've never been so proud to be Canadian in years. I turned the sound up to see if they were yelling ''Death to the Little Satan!'' But you can't have everything.

That's the point: A flag has to be worth torching. When a flag gets burned, that's not a sign of its weakness but of its strength. If you can't stand the heat of your burning flag, get out of the superpower business. It's the left that believes the state can regulate everyone into thought-compliance. The right should understand that the battle of ideas is won out in the open.

In other words, let them burn the flag. We can take it, and it shows exactly who the enemies of America are, and what they want -- the destruction of what we as a nation stand for. Let them have their ritual burning of a piece of cloth, which identifies them as what they are.

Posted by: Greg at 04:51 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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