A group of New Hampshire senators are contemplating a constitutional amendment prohibiting the burning of the American flag. The catalyst for this contemplation is precisely … well, who knows? There seems no precipitating event other than the desire to do something — anything — other than address educational inequity.
To my knowledge no flags have been burned in the 30 or so years that New Hampshire has failed to resolve its unconstitutional school funding scheme. The flag proposal is a solution looking for a problem. The education funding case is a problem looking in vain for a solution.
Perhaps New Hampshire lawmakers should amend the constitution to make it a crime to violate the constitution.
The suggested clause to be added is: “No person shall burn an American flag except as a respectful means of disposing of a worn or damaged flag.”
According to the Concord Monitorarticle published in the Valley News on Jan. 17, the lead sponsor, Sen. Harold French, R-Franklin, said, “The unity that that flag brings to us is very symbolic and is very meaningful to every single American.”
One Democrat, Sen. Jon Morgan of Brentwood, also supports the cause. “I will go to extraordinary lengths to protect the freedom of speech of groups that I vehemently disagree with. In this one particular case, in these incredibly divisive times especially, I feel as though one of the very few things that holds us all together right now is the fact that we’re all Americans. That flag is the symbol of that.”
Irony might be defined by proposing an extraordinarily divisive constitutional amendment as a way to “bring unity” and “hold us all together.”
During my adult lifetime, which has included protests against wars in Vietnam and Iraq and marches for racial justice, gay rights and reproductive rights, I have been moved to contemplate burning the flag only during those times when the criminalization of flag burning was proposed.
The most common argument against such an amendment is that the Supreme Court ruled, in a narrow 5-4 decision in 1989, that flag burning is protected speech under the First Amendment. New Hampshire’s patriots hope to circumvent that precedent by embedding the language in the state constitution rather than enacting a certain-to-be-challenged statute.
They probably shouldn’t worry. The Trump Court would almost certainly reverse that ruling if brought the right case.
Legal precedent aside, sanctification of the flag by criminalizing its destruction is a highly charged political game. The claim that the flag represents something good and true about America is specious at best. It is among the least unifying symbols in contemporary times.
For many reasons I won’t display a flag. It is a gratuitous and superfluous expression. I know my neighbors live in America. I need no flag to discover their nationality. I don’t need to see a flag lapel to know that my congressional representatives are American. I don’t need a flag in the classroom to know that my granddaughter’s school is in America.
Most, not all, flag exhibition intends exclusion, not inclusion. The American flag has become powerfully associated with a particular point of view. That point of view includes: an aggressive insistence on gun rights and angry resistance to gun control; fierce nationalism, unfortunately too often white nationalism; fervent anti-immigrant sentiments; militarism and more.
Along with a general aversion to conspicuous patriotism, I know too well that displaying a flag signals a level of tacit agreement with many of those points of view. I wish it weren’t so. But it is.
The flag itself has no intrinsic meaning. It absorbs the cultural and political values of those who flaunt it most. I don’t accuse all supporters of this amendment with embracing the most extreme of these viewpoints. But any claim that this is about unity is false. It is about conformity, not unity. And conformity is neither an American ideal nor a climate for social progress.
This political appropriation of the flag is also accompanied by endless commercialization and desecration — flags on gang jackets, picnic baskets, children’s toys, neckties, bathrobes, insurance company advertisements. If Old Glory once had nearly sacred status, those days are long gone. You can’t burn your trash without incinerating several flag images.
Particularly in these troubled times, our government has committed grievous offenses under that flag. We cage children at the border. We continue to disproportionately incarcerate citizens of color. We suppress voting and deny full rights to gay and transgender citizens. Sometimes burning the flag represents liberty and justice more powerfully than hanging it from every porch and saluting it at football games.
We’re living in such a troubled and troubling time — a time when you can wear a flag to a neo-Nazi rally, right next to the swastika, but you dare not set a flag afire as you weep for justice.
Steve Nelson lives in Boulder, Colo., and Sharon. He can be reached at stevehutnelson@gmail.com.