[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 119 (Friday, July 21, 1995)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1490]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



[[Page E1490]]


        A CONSTITUENT'S VIEWS ON THE FLAG DESECRATION AMENDMENT

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                          HON. JOSE E. SERRANO

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                          Friday, July 21, 1995
  Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Speaker, I recently received a letter from a 
constituent, Mr. Geoffrey Graham of the Bronx. Mr. Graham thanked me 
for my vote against the proposed constitutional amendment to permit 
Congress and the States to prohibit the physical desecration of the 
U.S. flag. He also enclosed an essay expressing his views on this issue 
in more detail, which I thought was very eloquent. I commend this essay 
to my colleagues, and hope that each and every one will read it 
carefully and think again about the messages this amendment to our 
Constitution would send to residents of the United States and to the 
rest of the world.
  Mr. Speaker, Mr. Graham's essay follows:
              Why I Oppose the Flag Desecration Amendment

       There are three reasons to oppose the Constitutional 
     amendment that would ``protect'' the flag.
       The most important is that it will bring a small measure of 
     fear into the lives of ordinary Americans. There are 
     countries where people live in deep fear of their own 
     government and institutions. Russia is a particularly tragic 
     example, but there are many others. The contrast in quality 
     of life between such countries and our own is so stark that 
     any change in that direction should be viewed with 
     apprehension.
       Now, the friendly and familiar American flag, always a 
     welcome presence, is being transformed into something that 
     must be handled warily. It will have to be kept from young 
     children and boisterous drunks, lest a felony occur. Unruly 
     adolescents will have to be taught that disrespect for this 
     object, unlike disrespect for the family bible or Crucifix, 
     can bring severe punishment from outside the family. 
     Idealistic teenagers, who sometimes believe in the First 
     Amendment with almost religious fervor, will have to learn 
     that the flag is an exception that could get them into very 
     serious and long-lasting trouble. Housewives who are tempted 
     to wash a soiled flag along with the regular laundry will 
     have to remember that they had better not. We will have 
     become a nation that is slightly afraid of its own flag.
       A second reason is that it will undercut our efforts to 
     help dissenters around the world who are being punished for 
     violating some holy symbol. Sometimes, polite verbal protest 
     is not enough. Most of us could sympathize with women in 
     Islamic fundamentalist countries who might burn their veil or 
     even a copy of the Koran. Of with women in poor Catholic 
     countries, where the church has great influence, who might 
     publicly destroy a Bible of crucific in anger over the 
     church's position on birth control. Or with inhabitants of 
     the former U.S.S.R. or Rhodesia if they burned their hated 
     internal passports. Or with Chinese dissidents who, following 
     the Tienanmen Square massacre, might direct a bitter symbolic 
     protest at China's leader Deng Xiaoping (the act is to 
     publicly break a small bottle, a ``xiao ping''). Our efforts 
     to shield such dissenters have been moderately successful; 
     but in the future, they will be weakened by the taint of 
     hypocrisy. Indeed if disrespect for an icon is the important 
     thing, rather than the form which the disrespect takes, it 
     will be hard for us to reproach the Iranian government for 
     its treatment of writers like Salman Rushdie.
       The third reason is that the amendment will vandalize 
     something much more important than the flag, our Constitution 
     which includes the Bill of Rights. The Constitution is based 
     on an unusual principle of government: an agreement to 
     strictly limit the ability of any group to use the machinery 
     of government against those of whom it disapproves. To that 
     end, it guarantees freedom of expression without concessions 
     to powerful political interests. In particular, it provides 
     that expressions of discontent must be harmful, rather than 
     merely convey and offensive idea, in order to be forbidden. 
     Now we are abrogating that principle in return for the 
     shallowest of satisfaction.
       The Constitution, not the flag, has made us the great 
     nation that we often are. It is admired around the world, and 
     has been imitated countless times. Along with the Magna Carta 
     and the Geneva and Hague Conventions, it is a landmark in the 
     human effort to treat each other with decency. It is one of 
     the greatest secular documents ever written, but its 
     greatness derives from the fact that we usually live up to 
     its guiding philosophy. It deserves better than this.
       There is still time for the American public to give this 
     proposed amendment the careful scrutiny it deserves. We 
     should.
     

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