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Amending Freedom

© Ken Goldstein

If you were to ask most people what the primary purpose of the Constitution of the United States is, I would hope that they would say, "To define and secure our inalienable rights as citizens," or something along those lines. Indeed, the main body of the Constitution very carefully outlines the limits of what the government can do for or to us, reserving all other rights to the states or the citizenry.

Within the main body, the Bill of Rights (the first ten amendments), and the seventeen subsequent amendments to the Constitution, there are very few "thou shalt not" items directed at individuals. There's the 18th Amendment, which instituted prohibition, but that was over-ridden by the 21st Amendment, which recognized our right to have a drink once in a while. There's the Amendments dealing with the abolishment of slavery, but although they're telling us we may not own slaves, they're really about the rights of individuals not to be held in slavery.

It is with this tradition in mind that I take attempts to amend the Constitution very seriously, and find suggested amendments that would limit our rights as citizens to be highly suspect and potentially dangerous. There are two such attempts currently underway.

The first is a perennial that comes around every so often; the so-called "flag protection amendment." Yes, flags, inanimate pieces of cloth, high in symbolism but low in individual activity, are apparently in need of special protection that would place their rights above the rights of living, breathing citizens.

Listen; destroying a symbol of the country is not the same thing as leading a revolution against it. It may be offensive, it may not be the most eloquent means of self-expression, but it is only an act against an inanimate object that serves as a form of protest. To curb the right of citizens to use the flag in protest would stand directly counter to their first amendment rights of freedom of expression, which would only make that symbolic act all the more powerful.

If somebody burns the flag outside the post office they can be charged with destruction of public property, vandalism, breaking and entering, disturbing the peace, and probably a dozen other crimes. If somebody goes to K-Mart and puts down $12 for their own flag and decides to burn it, it's nobody's damn business but their own. And, can I ask you, has there been some sort of epidemic of flag burning that I somehow missed in the papers?

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