There are two items in today's Philadelphia Inquirer that spur my writing today,
GOP's burning flag issue may pass by the paper's supposed political analyst, Dick Polman and
One Last Thing | Let's rally around the flag amendment by conservative columnist Jonathan Last.
Read on for more on the spurs in my side...
Polman, for a change, does a decent job of detailing why there is virtually no judicial or historical justification for a constitutional amendment that would permit legislation to ban flag burnning - such legislation having been consistantly struck down by SCOTUS, with the noted concurrance of Justice Scalia - and the unavoidable conclusion that the proposed amendment is 100% political.
Jonathan Last, OTOH, tries, and fails to, indirectly, show Polman to be wrong by concocting a justification for the amendment. His failure is assured when he make the claim that "the flag is not merely symbolic gauze; it has concrete meaning." This is patently false. The flag is a symbol, no more, no less and as a symbol, it is only that which it symboloizes that is deserving of protection.
But of course I digress, as the issue I want to discuss is the politics, the fact that, as jiacinto points out in this comment "this is an issue that costs Democrats elections" (attached to UU VIEW's diary, Nothing Patriotic About Flag Desecration Amendment).
In the past this has cost us on Election Day, my question is why? Not why might it cost us, but why the hell our candidates and the Democratic Party have done such an abysmal job in countering the inevitable juvenile attacks the issue spawns?
I can think of several effective ad campaign themes that would turn this anti-American nonsense back on the Republicans.
- Why does Rick Santorum want to make it illegal for President Bush to desecrate souvenir American Flags by signing them for his admirers? What exactly is he afraid of?
- My father/grandfather/uncle... put his life on the line in World War II to protect the freedoms our forefathers enshrined in the Constitution. These bravest of patriots specifically chose to leave out protection of national symbols. Why did they do that? What did they know that Rick Santorum seems to have missed? Was it that they understood what real bravery, real patriotism is? Was it that they weren't afraid of dissent? What exactly is it that Rick Santorum is so afraid of that he needs to change the Constitution to restrict the First Amendment, the amendment so important to the framers that they made it the very first amendment?
- Symbols are important. Symbols help us remember who we are (display cross, Star of David, Jesus Fish, menorah, yin/yang), where we come from (golden eagle, statue of liberty, liberty bell, flag). Sometime symbols remind us of what we stand for, and sometimes what we stand against (Nazi & SS symbols). But symbols are just that, symbols. We are justifiably proud when we display symbols of what makes this country great (repeat golden eagle, statue of liberty, liberty bell, flag), but is it the symbols that make us great or is it what they stand for, freedom, justice, equality? Rick Santorum apparently thinks its the symbols and not what they stand for. Apparently Rick Santorum thinks the freedoms our forefathers enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are so fragile they can't withstand some nut with a lighter. You and I know better. We know that America is more than strong enough to stand firm when someone, sane or not, desecrates what is a symbol, what is not, and can never be the thing for which it stands, the United States of America.
So here's what I think - every single Democrat in Congress should vote for the strength of the United States and against the quivering weakness that is the Republican Party, vote the flag desecration amendment into oblivion and revel in the opportunity to beat the shit out of these miscreants in November.
UPDATE: -
Cedwyn has a diary with some more good stuff and gives me another campaign option:
Don't republicans have * anything * better to do? I mean, really; this is almost obsessive-compulsive - they've been foisting this nonsense onto the Congressional agenda like clockwork since 1995.
Also, if the
63% opposition to the amendment from the 6/05 First Amendment Center survey is accurate, there is even greater reason for this issue to be a Democratic winner.