Flag Daze

Last week, in a joking way, I mentioned the issue of flag desecration, more commonly called flag burning.  The last time I wrote something that evoked as much hate mail, I had written about religion.  At least this time, I didn't get any death threats from either Saudi Arabia or Arkansas.  Yet.

Since so many people have angrily asked me to explain my position on flag burning, let me tell you a short story.

It was a beautiful October day in Washington D.C.  While at that time of the year in D.C., you can tell that cold weather is coming toward the end of the month, early in the month, it's glorious, with temperatures usually in the mid-70’s.

 

The young man walked half way up the steps in front of the Supreme Court, stopped and pulled a small bundle from the pocket of his windbreaker.  Shaking the bundle up and down, it quickly unfolded to reveal that it was an American flag.  From the same pocket, he produced a disposable cigarette lighter and used it to ignite one corner of the flag.

From about twenty feet away, a second young man noticed the burning flag and rushed over and tried to pull the flag away from the first young man.

“What the hell do you think you are doing?” screamed the second young man.  “You can’t burn the American flag.”

 “Leave me alone!” screamed the first young man.  “I have a right to protest.”

A third young man, a hundred feet away, had witnessed this exchange, and ran over.  He grabbed the arm of the second young man and tried to pull him off the young man with the burning flag.

“Leave him alone,” said the third young man.  “He’s not doing anything wrong.  He has a right to burn the flag if he wants to.”

We can stop our story right there.  Think about each of the three men: Is any of them right? 

The first young man is desecrating a flag that is dear to the hearts of most Americans.  Personally, I find this disturbing, but the man has an absolute right of free speech.  If burning a country’s flag is not political speech, then I have no idea what it is.  You will forgive me if I hope the young man burns a few fingers while he does this, but he has the right to voice his opinions.

The second young man--no matter how pure his motives--is not defending the United States of America.  Sadly, he is doing just the opposite.  One of the many things that flag symbolizes is the right of everyone to indulge in free speech, no matter how distasteful the rest of us find it.  The First Amendment is unnecessary for the protection of "popular" speech--anyone can go to any capital city of any totalitarian state in the world and praise the current leader.   But only in countries that honor the right of all men to speak any belief freely can someone publicly denounce the leader of the country.

Free speech is not easy--in fact, it is often painful.  And it is easy to understand the desire to moderate this right with talk about "honor" or about "the public good".  Surely hate speech is wrong?  For the good of the public, can we not put sensible limits on academic freedom?  Can we not at least ban the denial of the Holocaust?--as so many European countries have done?

No!--We cannot do this!  The only way to ensure free speech is to have no limits--for who knows who is to decide what those limits are to be?  If you can ban my opinion today, cannot someone else ban yours tomorrow? 

The third young man--the one trying to allow the first man to burn the flag--is the only one of the three who is upholding the Bill of Rights.  He is the only one seeking to protect someone’s right to voice an "unpopular" opinion and he is the only one who is seeking to honor the flag—even as it burns—by not destroying the ideals that it stands for.

Unfortunately, while you and I understand this, it seems that our own Supreme Court no longer does. 

Directly in front of the building housing the Supreme Court, there is a large, flat, beautiful plaza.  There are fountains, benches, and wide open spaces on this black marble plaza and it  is exactly the kind of place where you could sit and discuss constitutional issues--BUT YOU CAN'T.

It is NOT a free speech zone.  (The Supreme Court says so.)

You can carry signs on the sidewalk  (free speech is allowed there), but not on the plaza.  Guards at the Supreme Court will not allow signs on the plaza and T-shirts with political messages are not allowed.  At times, people have even been asked to remove small campaign buttons.

In a "supreme" act of irony, a young man wearing a T-shirt imprinted with the First Amendment was asked to leave the plaza. 

The idea seems to be that while the judges know that a protest would not sway their votes on various cases, they are afraid that some people will not understand this and believe their decisions might appear to have been swayed.  I'm not sure how the geographic location of a protest is supposed to raise or lower the perceived merits of a protest, but I will admit that I am not one of our nation’s top legal minds.

Therefore, there is a 1949 ordinance on the books that prohibits free speech on the plaza.  Recently, a young man challenged this law in court and the judge (who did understand the First Amendment) ruled in his favor, setting aside the 1949 statute.  The Supreme Court sent a lawyer to argue in its behalf at the trial, and when the judge ruled in favor of the young man, the Supremes appealed the case to yet a higher court.

Presumably, the case may eventually be argued in front of the Supreme Court.  Gee, I wonder how the Court will decide.