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30250 SW Parkway Ave., Suite #10
Wilsonville, OR 97070 Phone:
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| Political smoke doesn’t equal fire |
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| The flag burning amendment steals
attention from our nation’s real issues |
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Let there be no mistaking it. The American flag deserves our reverence and respect. With Flag Day and Memorial Day in our rearview mirror and Independence Day just ahead, we all need to remember that.
And nearly all of us do.
But the intelligence of the American people also deserves respect. And on that score, the renewed drumbeat calling once again for a constitutional amendment protecting the flag is a failure.
This misguided drive reeks of election-year grandstanding. Although the call is coming primarily from the right wing, members of both major parties are joining the fray.
We think believers in free speech can easily win the argument on the merits of the issue, but nonetheless, the campaign is in full swing.
Our FAX machine, for instance, has been burning up with press releases and statements urging that this amendment simply must be approved in order to “protect” reverence for the flag.
Of course, proponents of the idea can’t win the day by saying speech should be restricted, so they argue that flag burning isn’t speech. In fact, many of the dispatches we received have pooh-poohed the idea that there is such a thing as symbolic speech at all.
One quoted baseball great Tommy Lasorda as saying, “Speech is when you talk.”
Really? What about the Boston Tea Party? Did that not count as political speech with an unmistakable message? That one is easier to sympathize with, because nearly all of us agree it was a good thing.
But popular speech is not the kind of speech that needs protection.
People should be entitled to choose how they make political statements — within the law.
If people want to burn someone else’s flag, they are guilty of vandalizing the property of another. Everyone can agree on that. But if people want to buy their own flag and burn it safely — that is, outdoors, without hazards nearby — they should be subject to disapproval and scorn. But not arrest.
Even the staunchest of flag-protection advocates can point to very few actual flag burnings that have happened recently as acts of protest on American soil.
Besides, we are faced as a nation with many other formidable challenges that our elected officials should take a shot at solving. Let us not be distracted.
This fall, if a politician or candidate you know is attacked in a slick political advertisement for not supporting this amendment, don’t consider them a traitor.
Instead, look at them as a logical person who refuses to be distracted from solving real problems — no matter how unpopular that stance may be.
Happy Independence Day!
Editorials represent the official view of the newspaper as determined by the Editorial Board, and do not necessarily represent the views of individual staff members. |
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