Burning flag remains a nonissue

After reading in my morning paper that 300 House Republicans had voted for yet another constitutional amendment to make flag burning and other forms of desecration a criminal offense, I wracked my brain to recall any recent evidence of the problem that this perennial movement is so desperately trying to solve.

There must be an awful lot of seditious flag-burners out there or why would so many elected leaders – with Maine’s own Democratic Rep. Michael Michaud among them this time – feel compelled to raise the matter no less than five times in the last eight years?

Reflecting on the months since 9-11, I cannot remember another period of my life when I’d seen so many American flags on display at one time in this country. There are flags hanging from the front porches of houses everywhere you go. There are flags streaming from cars and trucks, and there are flags in store windows.

And long before the war in Iraq had even begun, there were large groups of people waving flags every day along our roadsides and highways. While many of the demonstrators carried their flags in support of the war, many also waved flags as they protested the war. And of all the flag wavers I’ve encountered over the last 21 months, not one that I know of has ever set fire to the Stars and Stripes or trampled it into the mud.

Since the anti-war protesters are the obvious target of all these Republican attempts to ban flag burning, which Democrats now consider to be a GOP rite of spring, I decided to check in with our local peace activists and raise this burning issue with them. At the Peace and Justice Center in Bangor, I met with Stephen Soucy, who grew up in Fort Kent and now lives in Lamoine. Soucy, who has been involved with the peace movement for about 20 years, is the office manager at the center and sometimes participates in anti-war protests.

Sitting in the center’s meeting room, amid all the activist literature, I noticed a few American flags prominently on display. None of them, in case you’re wondering, looked as if they’d been scorched, spit on, tattered, or dragged through the streets. In fact, one of the flags stood furled against the wall in a respectful fashion that would have made any American patriot proud.

“So,” I asked Soucy, “have you ever burned a flag?”

No,” he said. “Never.”

Because Soucy is acquainted with many of the people in Maine’s activist community, I asked him if he knew of someone else who has been out there burning the American flag in protest of the recent war.

“No, I can’t recall anyone burning flags,” he said. “Some activists have, in fact, deliberately chosen to carry flags during protests as a way of saying that it’s their flag, too.”

As far as Soucy is concerned, the flag is the symbol of a country that he has always loved deeply and always will.

“And I support our government when it deserves it,” he said. “For me, burning or otherwise desecrating the flag evokes an image of violence. And because I’m a nonviolent person, that kind of symbolic act just doesn’t fit with my values.”

While these persistent congressional amendments might seem to some as a solution in search of a problem, Soucy said he is far more concerned about the precious civil liberties that could go up in smoke if flag burning became a punishable offense.

“It’s part of who we are as a nation that we value our civil rights,” he said, “and this attack on free speech, which it is, seems more pernicious, more of an attack on our country than the act of burning a flag could ever be.”

He said the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq may have divided the nation in many ways, but the terrorist attacks that precipitated the fighting have highlighted the enormous capacity for compassion among Americans everywhere.

“And it just seems incongruous to me,” he said, “that burning a flag could be so threatening to some people in the face of the genuine values that make this country so great.”

Ron Gillis agreed. He joined the Army in 1957, then signed on three years later with the Air Force until he felt compelled to leave the military as a conscientious objector during the Cuban Missile Crisis. As president of the Bangor Chapter of Veterans for Peace, he said he has the greatest respect for the flag that he sometimes waves during anti-war demonstrations.

“In fact, the flag is one of the few things I still can respect, because I sure as hell don’t respect my government right now,” Gillis said. “No, I would never burn the American flag. I see the flag as a sacred symbol.”

And so do I – a fragile and replaceable symbol made of cloth or plastic and vulnerable to the simple flick of a Bic lighter. But the principles and values the flag stands for – including that most precious freedom of dissent – have managed to prove their durability just fine for more than 200 years.

Since those fundamental ideals ain’t broken, what exactly are all those politicians down in Washington so desperate to fix?