Once more a “we need to protect the flag” amendment is up before congress. It could not be more politically timed. It is soon to be July, wherein the Fourth Day thereof is our national Holy of Holies, when all the good citizens can get hammered on bad beer and blow up (mostly illegal) fireworks in sham commemoration of the blood spilled in freeing us from Britan. Of course, the “rocket’s red glare” part of that was not from the Revolution but from the War of 1812 (which is largely ignored, btw, in English schools, having been essentially a side-show for them, the bigger problem at the time being Napoleon).
I could go on at length about the political and philosophical idiocy of such a law. There was a time in this country you could be put in jail for disrespecting the flag–by wearing it as clothing, for instance. Mostly these were local laws or just vague “ordinances” which all got overturned in the furor over Vietnam, and rightfully so. A national emblem ought to be versatile. It ought to be useable by the citizens to express their appreciation or discontent as citizens any way they choose. So if we can raise the flag and praise the history and institutions which it represents, we should also be able to lower it in disgust when we recognize our country being stupid, arrogant, or criminal.
That is, I thought, one of things that makes us…what’s the word?…FREE.
Anyway, I could go on at length, but I won’t. I will instead point out a fact of history. Under the Nazis, it became a felony to desecrate or destroy or misuse the symbols of Germany, which included the eagle and the swastika. A felony. The Party then put those symbols on everything of importance to them, so that defacing a Nazi document alone was enough to get you interred.
It seems to me that, although I suspect superlatives as a matter of course, anything Nazi Germany found expedient or “noble” to do ought not be repeated by any nation that considers itself, or wishes to consider itself, decent and moral.
(And btw, next time some frothing-at-the-mouth Fundie calls you a Nazi because you support a woman’s right to choose an abortion, you might point out that in Nazi Germany abortion was a capital offense–for the doctor and the woman.)
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