Via Donklephant we have a USAT story from a few days ago that I missed on the pending flag-burning amendment that is set to come before the Senate.

According to the piece, the amendment is far closer to passage than I realized:

The Senate is one vote away from passing a constitutional amendment that would ban desecration of the U.S. flag, the closest that amendment supporters have been to passage.

The American Legion, which supports the amendment, and the American Civil Liberties Union, which opposes it, both say there are 66 votes to pass it.

Whether advocates can find the 67th vote to send the flag amendment to the states for ratification remains unclear. A Senate vote is set for the week of June 26.

[…]

For now, enough senators — including three Republicans — remain opposed to the flag amendment to keep it from getting to the states. Sen. Robert Bennett of Utah wants to write a law instead of rewriting the Constitution. Majority Whip Mitch McConnell of Kentucky objects to altering the First Amendment. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island also voted no in 2024.

The House has already voted in favor of proposing the amendment to the state legislatures with a 286-130 vote.

I don’t like this amendment for a variety of reasons.

First, I find it distasteful when politicians spend time, energy and money on “solving” a nonexistent problem for purely symbolic reasons because they hope that the process will garner them votes back home. There is no great flag-burning epidemic in this country. Indeed, the last time flag-burning was in serious vogue as a form a of protest was in the 1960s. I am not sure when the last time I saw a flag being burned on US soil–and given the anti-war protests and such over the last three years, it isn’t as if there haven’t been any opportunities.

The grand irony here is that if this resolution does pass the Senate, I predict that the likelihood is that there will be more flag-burning over the next several months than we have seen in our lifetime as groups and individuals protest the amendment itself.

Second, this is a classic example of the government trying to fix a problem that society already has fixed. We don’t like flag burning, and domestic groups who seek to protest the actions of the US government know this. They know that burning a flag will have a negative effect on their cause. Further, most such protesters, even if they are protesting an American administration, don’t want to burn the flag anyway.

Third, there is simply something creepy about enshrining in the Constitution a restriction on free expression. I don’t like flag burning, and nor do the vast majority of Americans. However, do we serve the cause that the flag is supposed to represent by placing a restriction on free expression in to the Constitution? I think not.

Back to Donkelephant’s Sean Aqui (a veteran of the Army, btw), I have to agree with the following:

Totalitarian countries place symbols on legal pedestals, because there’s no other way to inspire reverence for them. Free countries let their symbols earn respect, and recognize that freedom includes the freedom to spit on the symbols of that freedom. Compelling respect obliterates the reason for respect.

There is something far more powerful about the idea that our democratic beliefs are so dear to us that we allow the free expression of that with which we do not personally agree. That says far more about what the flag should stand for than codifying respect for the symbol and threatening the power of the state against any who do not show that respect.

Bob Kerrey, the former Senator from Kansas and a Viet Nam war veteran also weighs on this topic with a column in today’s WaPo: Our Flag and Our Freedom.