The Flag Is Fireproof

The flag, the American flag, is an abstraction--a certain arrangement of stars, stripes and colors--that exists (a) in the realm of Platonic ideals and (b) in the minds and hearts of people. To say this is not to denigrate the flag; on the contrary, it is to place the flag where it belongs, in a higher realm of existence than the material. A flag, any particular flag, is merely a copy. You can no more destroy the flag by burning a flag than you can destroy the Constitution by burning a copy of the Constitution.

The flag is fireproof. The Constitution is more vulnerable. It can be damaged quite effectively--by amending it in ways foreign to its spirit and hostile to its purposes. Members of Congress rushed to do just that in the wake of Texas vs. Johnson. George Bush, in the first truly sickening act of demagoguery of his young presidency, has now put the impetus of his support behind them.

The Supreme Court’s pronouncements in this case are notable for their passion. The dissenters’ passion is reserved mostly for the flag, the majority’s mostly for the Constitution. The dissenters venerate the symbol; the majority venerates the thing symbolized. Both have emotion on their sides, but the majority has logic, too.

Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist devotes many pages to explicating the special meaning of the flag. His dissent is studded with verse including four lines of Emerson’s “Concord Hymn” and the opening stanza of “The Star Spangled Banner.” He succeeds beautifully in making the point that the flag is a powerful symbol of a particular set of sentiments and ideas. Or, as Justice John Paul Stevens puts it, in a transcendently absurd passage I can’t resist quoting: “The message conveyed by some flags--the swastika, for example--may survive long after it has outlived its usefulness as a symbol of regimented unity in a particular nation. So it is with the American flag.”

What the Justice means is . . . Well, never mind. The point is that Rehnquist and Stevens want to have it both ways. The flag conveys a message that nothing else conveys, but burning a flag (in Rehnquist’s words) “conveyed nothing that could not have been conveyed and was not conveyed just as forcefully in a dozen different ways.” These assertions, Justice William J. Brennan Jr. remarks in a footnote, “sit uneasily” next to each other. If flying the flag is symbolic speech, so is burning one; and speech, in this country, is supposed to be free.

When the decision came down, I allowed myself to hope it would be the occasion for nothing worse than a harmless festival of hokum calculated to bring pleasure to the shades of H. L. Mencken and Sinclair Lewis. And that’s how it was, the first day. The inimitable Bob Dole rushed a wild statement up to the Senate press gallery. It began this way:

“Maybe those who sit in ivory towers agree with the Supreme Court. Maybe, as the man who burned the flag, millions of people hate America, hate the flag. If they do, they ought to leave the country. If they do not like America, that’s fine. Go find something you do like. If they don’t like our flag, go find one you do like.”

That was a paragraph to savor, especially the way the antecedents chased each other like enraged bees.

The show got ugly the next day, when the texts of proposed amendments started filling the hoppers--amendments like this one, offered by 17 members of the House:

SECTION 1. The misuse or desecration of the symbol, emblem, seal or flag of the United States is not protected speech under the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

SECTION 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

An America capable of writing this sort of tripe into its Constitution would be a country at once less serious and less funny than the country we thought we were living in. And less free, too.

President Bush’s role in all this is unusually contemptible. His first reaction was to say that while he regards flag burning as “dead wrong,” he could understand why the court decided as it did. But after a day’s reflection--and lunch with Lee Atwater--Bush decided that “the importance of this issue compels me to call for a constitutional amendment.”

If Bush has his way, the Bill of Rights will be amended for the first time in American history--and for what? Because of what danger? Flag burning is extremely rare, and, though offensive, essentially harmless. It has no “importance.” It is not even an “issue,” since no one, apart from a few isolated political skinheads, is in favor of it. So what’s going on?

The mystery vanishes when one recalls Bush’s use last fall of the Pledge of Allegiance “issue.” Now the same cynical manipulation of patriotic symbols, as perfected by political consultants, is to be enshrined in the Constitution. Negative campaigning is to be raised to the level of a civic sacrament. The desecration of the flag, which is not a problem, is to be made the pretext for the desecration of what the flag represents.

For George Bush, nice guy, the defilement of the Bill of Rights itself is just another tactic for narrow partisan gain. And it’s hard to see, at this point, who’s going to stop him.