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.
When I was in (what was then called) Junior High, we were learning about the three branches of government in a civics class. Quaint, that term "civics". Anyway, during the lecture on the division of powers, checks and balances, etc., I asked the teacher what prevented the Supreme Court from ruling that everyone else was wrong, and basically usurping all the powers of the other two branches? He, of course, didn't have an answer.
ReplyDeleteSo, in light of some of the Court's recent decisions (Citizens United, for one), let me ask again: What prevents the Supreme Court from ruling that everyone else was wrong, and basically usurping all the powers of the other two branches?
It would appear that the only thing preventing such a situation is the fact that they rarely seem to agree with each other. And on that depressing note, have a happy Monday.
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