On one hand, people on both sides of the argument seem to agree that the flag represents some set of American ideals, primarily (and most confoundingly for the argument at hand) the freedom to express one’s ideas no matter how unpopular.
On the other hand, the flag is also the symbol of the United States, the nation as it is, something that can change over time. In fact, a part of the pro-banning position is that a failure to ban flag burning will result in a deterioration of national spirit, decorum and freedom, a change in relation to the nation’s ideals for itself.
The idea that the flag doesn’t “compete” with other positions but rather stands for the space in which different positions can argue wants to unite those two symbolic referents, or in any event has the effect of doing so. To protect the American flag from burning because it stands for freedom of ideas protects a symbol of the nation in through the back door.
(I’d be a for a Free Speech Flag, maybe, but the idea of inventing a flag for that idea and then promptly insisting that no one is allowed to express themselves by defacing it makes my brain hurt.)
One of the other somewhat unexpected effects of the flag’s symbolic quality is that amidst the abstract ideas under discussion there is the material presence of the flag to consider – a materiality that creates vulnerability rather than solid reassurance. It is the strange nature of this debate that everyone agrees on the right of a person to stand next to a flag and disparage the flag itself and/or the principles for which it stands. The question is raised by the capacity of someone to damage or destroy the physical emblem – a thing much more readily and clearly done than the destruction of “freedom” or “the American Way.”
As well, the materiality of the flag raises a set of specific and potentially absurd questions about the nature of enforcement:, such as “how much would something have to look like an American flag to be protected under such an amendment?” There’s the classic 51-star flag hypothetical, but what about a parodic dollar-sign-for-stars switcheroo? A picture of a flag? How about a negative image? While its true that devising “wacky hypotheticals” doesn’t invalidate the premise of the desecration ban, it’s also true that there we’d inevitably return to an evaluation of communicative intent in deciding fringe instances of flag desecration, and that seems to me to illustrate the degree to which the ban is bound to limit political speech unconstitutionally.
Another entertaining hypothetical considers the fate of an actor who burns a flag while filming a movie about someone who burns a flag. A House Judiciary Committee report dismisses this:
But, of course, it’s not the same thing at all, because the actor playing the murder victim is not dead, but the flag is actually burned. Again, the issue comes back to the intent of the expression and the ideas the burner attempts to convey.
In committee testimony from June of 2003, Ohio Rep. Steve Chabot stepped into this set of questions by arguing that the legal system could be trusted to tell real, guilty flag-burners from confusingly similar non-guilty flag or flag-like object burners. Hopefully, he suggests:
The first thing to note is that Chabot’s comparison is off in that it notes a difference based on the granting of consent by the object of someone else’s action. The flag can’t do that. It is a repository of ideas, a sign whose meaning is expressed and perpetually altered by its appearance on poles, coffins or fire [syllepsis!].
Unwittingly, I think Chabot provides a compelling view of the world in which burning-ban proponents should reconcile themselves. You may be disturbed and offended to see someone burn an American flag, but the prospect of being disturbed and offended lurks everywhere. You might, for instance, be excited about a date with a Congressman from Ohio, only to discover, after giving your consent to be conveyed to those locations, that his idea of dinner and a movie means a first stop at a grocery store.
Obviously the best thing about this post is the “cartoon” about halfway through--which like most political cartoons illustrates perfectly the point you're making: grocery store before the movie date? Yes, no? Both are ok!!
That is, I'll have you know, the Free Speech flag. I hope you're not desecrating it!
I'm confused. If you burn a flag that has dollar signs instead of stars, aren't you saying you're against the idea that the U.S. is too materialistic?
Said: Let's take this transformation one step at a time. An American flag stands for America. Display of an American flag with dollar signs replacing stars is a critique of American materialism. You would say that burning that flag would be a critique of the critique of American materialism. I would argue that the symbolic potential of the American flag overrides the dollar sign substitution — that, paradoxically, you are making the same critique by burning it as you do by displaying it. It's still an American flag.
There is a threshhold, though, which I think is crossed by a T-shirt I own. It is a representation of the American flag in which the red and white stripes have been replaced by bombs of various sizes. The resemblance to the American flag is sufficiently tenuous that I think that it could readily be burnt by people as a statement against the organization the T-shirt represents without concerns for flag desecration.
I also don't understand why the bird is trying to eat a piece of metal with a picture of a bird on it. Is he desecrating himself?
And why does the above comment begin with “Said”? Who said it? The guy who wrote it, or someone else?
S. Shirazi: I was addressing your comment regarding the flag with the dollar signs, and interpellating you, although it would seem incorrectly. I seem to have inadvertently confused you with Said Shirazi, a writer I admire from elsewhere on the Internet. Although I have no way of verifying this, there may be as many Shirazis as Cohens in the New York City phone book. I regret the error.
This spring I saw the senior project show at the Yale art gallery, and there was a magnificent piece that featured a flag with all the red and blue torn off and strewn on the ground. The backing was white, but a different thickness from the white of the stripes and stars, so the pattern was still visible (behind the flag on the wall was a forged birth certificate suggesting that the sculptor, Illiadora Margellos, had been born in Minneapolis or St. Paul; in front of the flag were two monitors showing footage that looked like close-ups of skin with some European(?) language providing the soundtrack.)
When I first saw the flag, I was stunned by its effectiveness as a protest of institutionalized racism. But when I thought about it more, I began to appreciate it for a very different reason. If the flag were all white, reference to “red, white, and blue” would evoke at least a little confusion as to whether the speaker was citing France, Russia, the Union Jack, or the antique American flag. The white flag was really beautiful, even though it reminded me of white supremacist racism (perhaps because it did? a bit of reprieve from the pervasive self-delusion of Americans?). It also occurred to me that an all-white flag might weaken the notion of “us and them” in favor of an inclusive “us”. Finally, there's the contrast of a bloody shirt vs. a white flag of peace/humility.
As I sit here and try to think of a justification for making a joke about “what to do with all the old flags when they're replaced with white ones? burn them.” it occurs to me that the flag code actually sanctions burning. If I'm not mistaken, a flag that has touched the ground can be dealt with in three ways: kissing it 50x, burying it, or BURN.
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