Mom and Dubya

Mom lets her fingers do the talking.

Recently the Senate barely rejected a proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution, supported by Mr. Bush, which would have criminalized flag-burning, or "flag-desecration".

Burning our flag is an offensive and inflammatory (sorry) thing to do, but--changing the Constitution? What is going on here, WTF? The ideas that make us a great nation don't include prison time for burning a symbol--but they do include this one: "Freedom of speech is not for the thought you love but for the thought you hate the most."



This ought to be obvious to anyone older than, say, 16. But no, it's not for the Stupid Lobby. You know, the one Karl Rove is riling up now that it's time for Midterm Elections. And so we have the periodic calls for imprisonment of idiots who burn flags, defending marriage against the gay terrorists, etc. It's all about fear, isn't it.

Like the push to amend the Constitution to "protect" marriage, this "flag protection" ploy is a sign of the backwards-looking times we're in. As a Newsweek columnist put it, "For more than 200 years, we’ve occasionally used the amendment process to expand rights. This would be the first time we would enshrine their restriction."

Here's the thing about this outrage about flag-burning: it's a poor substitute for outrage about young soldiers getting their arms, legs, and heads blown off. War is justifiable only when all other means are exhausted. Demanding that is real patriotism, not demanding an end to the burning of cloth with stripes and stars.

My Mom freely expresses her revulsion with scoundrels who wrap themselves in the flag. She agrees with Bill Hicks, who said "The soldiers didn't die for the flag. They died for what the flag stood for, which was the freedom to burn the f*cking flag. Case f*cking closed."