PERSPECTIVES ON FREE SPEECH : Rights Are Our Banner

It is ironic that on this Flag Day, when we are celebrating the triumph of America’s democratic values throughout the world, here at home the value of free expression is threatened with its first weakening in 200 years.

While a few attention-seeking juveniles seem determined to make careers of burning the flag in front of TV cameras, politicians are pushing for a constitutional amendment that would weaken the very freedoms that the flag represents. Shame on both those who burn the flag and those who would wrap themselves in it.

Throughout the world on this Flag Day, the values that Old Glory symbolizes are stronger and more respected than ever before.

Yet some American politicians show a disturbing lack of appreciation for freedom in our own nation. As soon as the Supreme Court ruled Monday that Congress’ attempt to outlaw flag burning was unconstitutional, the clamor to amend the Constitution began again. Fortunately, many ordinary Americans recognize that we would not honor the flag by restricting the freedoms that it symbolizes. Last year, when the constitutional amendment frenzy was at a peak, I received many veterans’ letters opposing tinkering with the Bill of Rights.

During World War II, when our nation and the entire free world were truly at risk, we did not amend the Bill of Rights. On the contrary, during the darkest period of the war, on June 14, 1943, the Supreme Court handed down one of its landmark First Amendment decisions in a case involving the flag.

The court held that it was unconstitutional to require schoolchildren to salute the flag or recite the Pledge of Allegiance. “Those who begin by coercive elimination of dissent,” Justice Robert H. Jackson observed for the majority, “soon find themselves exterminating dissenters.” The case was made difficult, he added, “not because the principles of its decision are obscure but because the flag involved is our own.”

Nonetheless, the court held that “if there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion or other matters of opinion.”

Those words were written amid the fury of the greatest war in our history, when national unity mattered most. Yet the Flag Day decision of 1943 provoked none of the righteous protest we hear today, some of it coming from people who never served in the armed forces themselves.

The Bill of Rights and the flag cannot be set at odds. Opposing the constitutional amendment honors the flag.