Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Inflammable Rhetoric: The Senate seems to be one vote away from passing a constitutional amendment banning the desecration of the American flag.

Apparently the Senate has no qualms about desecrating the U.S. Constitution and our liberties enshrined in the Bill of Rights.

The Republicans must be scraping the bottom of the barrel to pull out this golden oldie. The amendment has failed repeatedly in the past, but recent GOP gains make passage more likely. If passed, it would represent the only time that the Congress amended the Constitution to restrict our freedoms, instead of expanding them, other than Prohibition. And we all know how well that turned out.

As I've said before, people who burn the American flag aren't very smart. And that's partly why we need to keep our First Amendment rights intact: It makes it easier to spot the stupid people. Anyone who lights a flag on fire (and, by extension, his hand and arm and clothes, and possibly his hair) doesn't have anything intelligent to say. We can safely ignore them.

But any government that needlessly tramples on our rights to free expression does more to dishonor our country than any pyromaniac protestors do. It's more patriotic to exercise your rights as an American than to brutally suppress them.