Essay: A Few Symbol-Minded Questions

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Commercial exploitation of the flag is commonplace in print, on television and around business premises. Since such use (almost by definition) debases the flag, should it be outlawed? What should be done about garments featuring % a flaglike motif? When a flag is cut and sewed into a shirt, is it still a flag?

Does political exploitation debase the flag? Should it be prohibited?

Philosophically speaking, is it even possible to desecrate the U.S. flag? One can desecrate something that is sacred, holy or religious (which is just what desecrate primarily means, according to the Oxford English Dictionary). Is the U.S. flag sacred, holy or religious? Or is it a symbol of a secular state?

If the flag is now a secular symbol, would an amendment against desecrating it transform it, by implication, into a sacred symbol? Would such an act approximate the founding of a state religion?

If the flag is a sacred, holy or religious symbol, is the worship of it idolatry? Would a flag-worshiping congregation be exempt from taxes like other churches? Should flag burning be considered desecration even if the burner does not believe it to be sacred, holy or religious? Does sacredness exist in a physical object or in the mind of the object's worshiper? There seems no end to such questions.

Answers are not as plentiful. It is not enough to say, as a New York State senator once said, "We want people to respect the flag, and if they will not respect it voluntarily, then we will make them respect it involuntarily." Toward that end, lawmakers might get useful guidance from the Alien and Sedition Acts. Passed in 1798, they were enforced in a way that made a crime of any idea, opinion, remark or act a judge disapproved of. One New Jersey man was arrested and fined $100 for saying he did not care if somebody fired a cannon up the President's arse.

Funny, the laws that made it sedition to speak ill of the President and the Government contained no provision against flag desecration. Still, Federalist judges sitting at the time would have been happy to imprison any Jeffersonian Republican who abused the flag. Among the Americans the Federalists did put behind bars was the author of a placard that urged NO STAMP ACT, NO SEDITION AND NO ALIEN ACTS. And newspapers sternly denounced as "seditious" a group that burned not the flag, but the Alien and Sedition Acts.

That raises yet another question: Should it be a crime to burn a statute or constitutional amendment that makes flag burning a crime?