Flag-Burning Amendment

* Congress’ attempt to add an “anti-desecration” amendment to the Constitution (June 11) got me thinking about the ramifications of such a law. First, there is no such thing as the flag of the United States; there are merely representations which more or less express the (current) specifications of the flag. The question then arises: When, for the purposes of this new law, is a representation “close” enough to be considered a flag?

Must it be of a specified size? If not, what about postage stamps bearing the image of the Stars and Stripes? Does the act of canceling them constitute desecration? What about a black-and-white representation of the flag, or one that has the wrong number of stars, or stripes, or is pink and green? What about digitized images of a flag on a computer disk? Would deleting a file constitute desecration? It would seem that either the definition would need to be so specific that any deviation would exclude the object from the class, or be so broad that many articles of clothing would be protected!

The way to protect our national symbol from desecration is to honor the principles embodied in our Bill of Rights--not to attempt to restrict those rights by this ill-advised, pseudo-patriotic action.

NORMAN PALLEY

Culver City