First, the good news: A proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would have banned desecration of the flag fell one vote short of approval in the U.S. Senate today, preserving for now the right to use the flag to make political statements.
“Our country’s unique because our dissidents have a voice,” said Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, a World War II veteran who lost an arm in the war and was decorated with the Medal of Honor.
“While I take offense at disrespect to the flag,” he said, “I nonetheless believe it is my continued duty as a veteran, as an American citizen and as a United States senator to defend the constitutional right of protesters to use the flag in nonviolent speech.”
Here is what I wrote about the proposed amendment earlier this year.
The flag amendment is just one in a number of assaults the First Amendment has faced in recent times. The amendment protects five basic — I would argue our most basic — American freedoms: speech, the press, religion, assembly and the right of citizens to redress their government.
Freedom of speech covers the right to decent using words and symbols, like the flag, but also to write and speak out, to sing and to proclaim. The extreme partisans of our times, however, can result in harsh rebukes, verbal assaults, even death threats (ask the Dixie Chicks). Folks like Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh question our patriotism, Ann Coulter accuses the left of treason and the administration builds its political base on the wreckage.
Religious groups are making greater and greater inroads into the public square, imposing their beliefs and squeezing out the unbelievers, while the government uas taken control of protest, forcing those critical of the administration into protest pens or turning their protests into crimes.
It is the freedom of the press, however, that is facing the most concerted assault. The latest attack by the Bush administration came this week, when the presidents and his men went after The New York Times for providing the reading public with information on the machinations of its government and another intrusion on our privacy. (The troubling nature of the progam has caused a European human rights group to lodge formal complaints.)
Uncovering the program, the Bushies say, endangers national security (their standard argument whenever anyone calls them on anything) and is tantamount to treason. This is nonsense, of course. The Times was just doing its job — which is to provide the public with information, the lifeblood of democracy.
The South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
Hank Kalet 