Last Updated: May 20, 1999
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First
Amendment
Group’s stance on the Flag Desecration Act is an unacceptable
attack on the very freedoms for which its members fought
By Pat Murphy
Instead of filling editorial columns with outrage, those with a passion
for the touchstone of American freedoms should act, not merely talk, about
assaults on the First Amendment.
I did — by not renewing my American Legion membership.
Sure, an indiscernible gesture.
But how hypocritical to continue paying dues, even less than $20, to
a principal provocateur in attacks on the First Amendment, just as it would
be hypocritical for my brethren who are Legionnaires to continue their
memberships.
The Legion used a front group, the Citizens Flag Alliance, to strong-arm
intellectually challenged members of Congress to fall into lockstep behind
the so-called "flag desecration" amendment — or else.
The "or-else" was a threat by the Legion’s national commander at the
time a year or so ago, when he wrote members of Congress demanding action
— and if failing to act, "see you in November." "See you in November" is
the unmistakable code used by the likes of the National Rifle Association
to break stubborn politicians into submission by suggesting election time
opposition.
Stupid me.
I’d assumed all these years the Legion stood for a basic doctrine —
that Americans risking their lives in military service do so to protect
birthright freedoms of Americans.
Like my father, a World War I Navy gunner’s mate first class, I was
no Legion activist, merely a dutiful dues-payer as a Korean War infantry
sergeant vet. Consider, then, how bewildered when I received the first
shrill, spiffy brochure from the Citizens Flag Alliance, asking support
(credit cards accepted, thank you) for its scheme to criminalize what it
considers abuse of Old Glory and outlining the horror visited on Americans.
Strangers reading such tripe might believe the land of the free was
in the icy embrace of an emergency, requiring Washington’s full force and
fury to protect 250 million-plus of us from a peril more sinister than
the vacuous "Red menace" promoted by an earlier scaremonger, Sen. Joe McCarthy.
And what crisis panicked the Legion into abandoning lofty tradition
to become the agent for monkeying with the Constitution? The Legion claims
the nation’s soul is at stake — by the spectacle of fewer than 50 recorded
episodes of protesters burning or stomping on the American flag, a First
Amendment right confirmed in the courts.
Hand-wringing sponsors of the amendment and their equerries in the House
and Senate seem determined to abandon lessons of their high school American
History and Civic 101 classes — the First Amendment doesn’t condition freedoms
on the basis of whether objectionable to one group’s tastes. Could it be
that conservative politics, even fattening the Legion’s treasury, are at
work in this scheme?
There’s even something slapstick about the amendment: it doesn’t define
what actually is an American flag. Is a true Old Glory only one that’s
manufactured by a flag maker accredited by Congress? Or is any replica
a "flag" — such as jogging shorts, neckties, miniature souvenir flags sold
at parades, and even unspeakable adaptations of Old Glory (such as on condoms)?
Would anyone making or possessing such "flags" be guilty of "desecration"
and arrest by flag police?
And, do lawmakers realize that disposing of old U.S. flags by fire is
flag etiquette? Can flag burning be a criminal act for one person, an honorable
deed for another? One must question the intelligence of those casually
endorsing such whimsical "patriotism."
If the American Legion’s disgust with how Old Glory is treated by a
handful of oddballs requires a constitutional amendment, how far behind
can the American Legion be with an amendment forbidding Roseanne from singing
the National Anthem?
Murphy is the former publisher of The Arizona Republic, Phoenix.
He lives in Ketchum, Idaho.
