President Trump desires to penalize anybody who burns the American flag. After initially saying his intent – apparently earlier than being instructed the Supreme Court docket has already mentioned burning the flag is protected beneath the free expression clause of the First Modification – Trump mentioned he needs to criminalize such habits if it violates present state and native legal guidelines.
In a press release launched by the White Home, the president mentioned: “However the Supreme Court docket’s rulings on First Modification protections, the Court docket has by no means held that American Flag desecration performed in a fashion that’s more likely to incite imminent lawless motion or that’s an motion amounting to ‘combating phrases’ is constitutionally protected.
“My Administration will act to revive respect and sanctity to the American Flag and prosecute those that incite violence or in any other case violate our legal guidelines whereas desecrating this image of our nation, to the fullest extent permissible beneath any obtainable authority.”
The phrase “sanctity” is often considered a spiritual phrase. It means “the state or high quality of being holy, sacred, or saintly.” Imputing holiness to a bit of fabric (except maybe it’s the burial fabric of Jesus, often known as the Shroud of Turin) is a type of idolatry, outlined as “the worship of idols.”
Sure, the flag stands for one thing, however it’s not that one thing.
In two instances – Texas v. Johnson (1989) and United States v. Eichman (1990), the court docket held that the correct to protest the flag outweighed the federal government’s curiosity in defending its symbolic function. Due to this fact, efforts to ban flag burning have been declared unconstitutional.
The president’s assertion is clearly a political one, designed to maintain his base (and cable TV hosts and their friends) fired up. There doesn’t look like an epidemic of individuals burning the American flag and even those that have completed so in recent times characterize a tiny minority. Some might not even be People.
If the president desires to revive common respect for the flag, the method ought to start in faculties, the place some have stopped saying the Pledge of Allegiance. We ought to be pledging allegiance to the nation, which the pledge ultimately will get to with “and to the Republic for which it stands.” That’s the appropriate verbiage. We residents are pledging our allegiance to the Republic for which the flag stands, to not the flag, itself. Isn’t that what these taking the oath to grow to be Americans pledge? There’s nothing concerning the American flag in that oath.
Once more, it is a political transfer by the president, one thing like including “beneath God” to the pledge, which President Dwight Eisenhower did in 1954. Beforehand, faculty kids had recited the pledge that was initially written in 1892 with none reference to God. The transfer so as to add God to the pledge occurred in the course of the “pink scare,” when many American politicians needed to claim the prevalence of American capitalism over Soviet communism, which conservatives, particularly, considered godless.
Higher to mock and isolate these few misguided sufficient to burn the flag than to lock them up. Shaming those that would burn the flag is best than turning the material into an idol, except the flag might need been made in China! As for educating the prevalence of capitalism over different financial and political programs, the New York Metropolis mayor’s race may use a dose of that as a self-declared “Democrat-Socialist” seems on the verge of victory within the November election.
To whom or to what would a mayor Zohran Mamdani pledge his allegiance?
Readers might electronic mail Cal Thomas at tcaeditors@tribpub.com. Search for Cal Thomas’ newest e-book “A Watchman within the Evening: What I’ve Seen Over 50 Years Reporting on America” (HumanixBooks).
