news you can use

Flag-burning clause defaces Constitution

By Casey Lartigue
Special to The Wichita Eagle

The House voted 298-125 last week for a one-sentence amendment to the U.S. Constitution: "The Congress shall have power to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States."
Why did Congress stop there? The amendment needs to be expanded to read:
"The Congress shall have power to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States that anyone in Congress happens to own. Anyone who burns a flag stolen from the home or office of a member of Congress shall be punished to the maximum extent of the law."
In other words, hold flag burners to the same standard we hold people to when they burn property that is not their own: You burn it, you buy it.
Congress needs to fight fire with fire by responding to the symbolic act of burning Old Glory with symbolic action of its own -- each new Congress should pass a nonbinding resolution, call it Resolution 1776 this time, condemning flag burning. They'll have a chance to condemn flag burning without incinerating the First Amendment.
The resolution is needed because it has become a tradition for the House to prove its devotion to freedom by restricting freedom. The goal has been to overturn the Supreme Court's 1989 and 1990 decisions slapping down state and federal attempts to criminalize flag burning. If the flag-burning amendment becomes law, it would mark the first time that the First Amendment has ever been amended. That would surely set off a bonfire by interest groups demanding that disliked words, texts and ideas be criminalized.
In their desperation, some inflamed representatives have even referred to flag burning as a hate crime. Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, R-Calif., and many others who denounce flag burning as a hate crime have themselves been missing in action on the issue of hate crimes.
During House debate on flag burning, Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., argued:
"Vandalizing a no-parking sign is a misdemeanor, but burning a flag is a hate crime, because burning the flag is an expression of contempt for the moral unity of the American people."
Hyde has, however, created a false analogy -- a flag can be privately owned, whereas no-parking signs are public property. If someone happens to own a no-parking sign, then he should certainly be allowed to burn it, as long as he doesn't endanger others or their property.
Our elected representatives need to think beyond the next election. As Harvard Law professor Charles Fried said in testimony before a Senate committee in 1990, putting the flag-burning amendment in the Constitution would be like drawing "a mustache on the 'Mona Lisa' of our liberties." Fried, then solicitor general in the Reagan administration, added: "It would be a piece of vandalism whose mark will be with us forever."

Casey Lartigue is staff writer at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington, D.C.

Design copyright Scars Publications and Design. Copyright of individual pieces remain with the author. All rights reserved. No material may be reprinted without express permission from the author.

Problems with this page? Then deal with it...