[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 161 (Wednesday, October 18, 1995)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1967]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



               E X T E N S I O N S   O F   R E M A R K S


[[Page E 1965]]


                     THE FLAG DESECRATION AMENDMENT

                                 ______


                        HON. ANDREW JACOBS, JR.

                               of indiana

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, October 18, 1995

  Mr. JACOBS. Mr. Speaker, I place in the Record a paper written by 
George Anastaplo, law professor at Loyola University, Chicago.
  Professor Anastaplo has more than one academic discipline, including 
lecturer in the liberal arts at the University of Chicago and Professor 
Emeritus of political science and of philosophy at Rosary College. This 
paper was delivered by Professor Anastaplo at the Constitution Day 
banquet organized by the political science department of the University 
of Dallas on September 13 of this year, 1995.

     On the Sacred and the Profane: The Flag Desecration Amendment

                         (By George Anastaplo)

       ``The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and 
     the Members of the several State Legislatures and all 
     executive and judicial Officers both of the United States and 
     of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation 
     to support the Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever 
     be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust 
     under the United States.''--The Constitution, Article VI.


                                   i

       Once upon a time Robert R. McCormick, publisher of the 
     Chicago Tribune, was perhaps the most influential journalist 
     in this country and a leading figure in the conservative wing 
     of the Republican Party, perhaps even as conservative at 
     times as the Politics Department of this University. He was 
     in unquestioned command of the Tribune, then as now one of 
     the greatest newspapers in the United States. So firm was his 
     control that he could even institute unilateral reforms in 
     the spellings of words used in his paper, at least so long as 
     he lived.
       One day (I have heard) Colonel McCormick, while presiding 
     over an editorial board meeting at the Tribune Tower on North 
     Michigan Avenue in Chicago, became so incensed with something 
     one State's Legislature had done that he ordered that State's 
     star to be immediately cut out of the American flag in the 
     main lobby of the Tribune Tower. Of course, the Colonel's 
     editors were disturbed by this turn of events, but they 
     knew he was not a man to be contradicted when his passions 
     were aroused.
       Still, one of them did venture to wonder out loud, however 
     deferentially, whether there was a law against thus ruling a 
     State out of the Union. (I digress for a moment: There is an 
     ironic touch to this story which probably no one noticed at 
     the time. The Colonel's grandfather, who founded the Tribune, 
     had been a supporter of Abraham Lincoln, the champion of 
     keeping all of the States in the Union.) Now back to our 
     story: The Colonel, upon hearing the query about the relevant 
     law, ordered the newspaper's lawyers to be consulted, which 
     was done at once from the conference room while the Tribune 
     board of editors waited.
       All of them, including the Colonel, could of course hear 
     the critical question asked from their end of the telephone 
     conversation that followed: ``Is there any law against 
     cutting a star out of the Flag?'' The senior partner at the 
     other end of the line, who must have suffered considerably at 
     times as one of the Colonel's lawyers, was so agitated by 
     this unexpected question that his shouted response could be 
     heard by everyone in the room: ``Oh, for Heaven's sakes, what 
     blasted fool would want to cut a star out of the Flag?!'' 
     (His language may have been even stronger than this.) I do 
     not know what happened thereafter either to that lawyer or to 
     the flag in the Tribune lobby at the hands of Colonel 
     McCormick. I do know that this episode can serve to remind us 
     that the Flag can be abused in a variety of ways, most if not 
     all of them well-intentioned.
       The Constitution, too, can be abused at times. Particularly 
     notorious have been the decisions by the United States 
     Supreme Court in the pre-Civil War Dred Scott Case, in the 
     post-Civil War pro-segregation cases, and in a century of 
     challenges to Congress's power to regulate commerce among the 
     States. Many today would add to this list the Court's 
     abortion decisions in recent decades.
       We should not be surprised that the Supreme Court makes 
     mistakes. We all do, not least when we act through one or 
     another of the branches of our governments. It has always 
     been difficult to determine what should be done about 
     misinterpretations by the Supreme Court. This question 
     includes the issue of what the authority of the Court should 
     be when it reads the Constitution differently from the other 
     two branches of the national government. (Less difficult to 
     determine is what should happen when the Supreme Court's 
     reading of the Constitution differs from the reading by any 
     State government.)
       The American people have, at least until quite recently, 
     been reluctant to resort to constitutional amendments in 
     order to correct even obvious judicial misinterpretations of 
     the Constitution. Of the twenty-seven amendments which we 
     have had, only four of them represent efforts to reverse 
     judicial interpretations: the Eleventh Amendment (of 1798) 
     with respect to the judicial power of the United States, the 
     first sentence in the Fourteenth Amendment (of 1868) with 
     respect to a critical Dred Scott ruling, the Sixteenth 
     Amendment (of 1913) with respect to the power of Congress to 
     levy an income tax, and the Twenty-sixth Amendment (of 1971) 
     with respect to eighteen-year-olds suffrage. The attempt to 
     ratify an amendment (proposed in 1921) empowering Congress to 
     regulate child labor proved unnecessary when the Supreme 
     Court reversed itself on this issue. A related, but far more 
     important, reversal came with the Court's eventual 
     recognition of a Congressional commerce power which 
     resurrected the expansive spirit of Chief Justice Marshall 
     with respect to this issue.
       During the first decade after the 1973 Roe v. Wade abortion 
     decision, there was serious talk about a constitutional 
     amendment reaffirming the long-accepted powers of the States 
     to regulate abortions. But it soon became evident that such 
     an amendment could not muster the support it would need 
     either in Congress (two-thirds of each house) or in the 
     States (three-fourths of their legislatures). It has also 
     become evident that no constitutional amendment or law can, 
     in the face of the self-administered abortion-inducing drugs 
     that are becoming available, do much to impede significantly 
     the recourse to abortions by young women. Those of us who are 
     troubled by the abortion epidemic, as well as by the 
     illegitimacy epidemic, in this country should not expect 
     government coercion (direct or indirect) to provide the cures 
     that may be needed. At the root of such problems are 
     influential opinions about the good and the bad, including 
     radical opinions about the sanctity of private property and 
     privacy. The sustained outbreaks of these epidemics in other 
     parts of the world should remind us that neither the 
     Constitution nor the Supreme Court's reading of it is 
     ultimately responsible for these problems in our time.
       One consequence of a technology-based nullification of 
     government power to supervise abortion and birth-control 
     measures may be the involuntary liberation of those troubled 
     souls who have long felt, understandably enough, that they 
     should dedicate themselves wholeheartedly to political and 
     social actions (including constitutional amendments) so long 
     as it seemed possible to do something about what they 
     consider terrible deeds. Now these latter-day Abolitionists 
     will have to devote themselves almost exclusively to 
     education and social programs, to persuasion, and perhaps 
     above all to prayer in order to deal responsibly with what 
     they must still consider a desperate situation.


                                   ii

       Even so, there is something touching in the form that the 
     faith which many have in the Constitution can take; a change 
     in the Constitution, they seem to believe, can cure this or 
     that distressing problem. They do not realize that if the 
     Constitution should come to be readily adapted to changing 
     circumstances it would lose much of its dignity and power. 
     That is, there may well be something to the recent complaint 
     (albeit by a partisan Democratic member of the House of 
     Representatives) that some of her colleagues are treating the 
     Constitution as though it were ``a rough draft.'' (Patricia 
     Schroeder, quoted in Richard E. Cohen, ``In Charge of 
     Constitutional Change,'' The National Journal, June 24, 1995, 
     vol. 27, no. 25.)
       It can be instructive as well as troublesome to confront 
     the recent indulgence in attempts at constitutional 
     amendments. In virtually every instance since the 1971 
     eighteen-year-olds-vote amendment (the Twenty-sixth 
     Amendment), the more strenuously-advocated amendments, if 
     ratified, either would have had no appreciable effect or 
     would have done considerable harm (in addition to the danger 
     of teaching people to treat the Constitution like a mere 
     statute).
       The most illustrious thus far of these recent exercises in 
     constitutional frivolity is one that has been enshrined in 
     the Constitution, the Twenty-seventh Amendment ``ratified'' 
     in 1992, only two hundred and three years after it was 
     originally sent out to the States for ratification by the 
     First Congress. It provides: ``No law varying the 
     compensation for the services of the Senators and 
     Representatives shall take effect until an election of 
     Representatives shall have intervened.'' The mode of 
     completing ratification of this amendment, so long after its 
     original 

[[Page E 1966]]
     submission to the States, was rather dubious. The official 
     acquiescences in this ``ratification'' reflected an 
     awareness of the popular discontent with Congress at the 
     time. The rule laid down in this amendment is defensible--
     but it was hardly needed in the light of the general 
     practice of Congress for two centuries now of having its 
     pay increases take effect for the succeeding Congress. 
     Even the Equal Rights Amendment proposed in 1972, which 
     would have served as a grace note for the Constitution, 
     now seems superfluous also. It has been virtually 
     implemented in effect by many statutes and judicial 
     interpretations on behalf of women. Our experience with 
     the proposed Equal Rights Amendment has been somewhat like 
     that with the proposed Child Labor Amendment more than a 
     half century before.
       I have suggested that an Abortion Amendment would not 
     ``work,'' even if it could be ratified. The same should be 
     said about the proposed Balanced Budget Amendment. Whether a 
     balanced budget is a good thing for the country depends in 
     part upon circumstances--but it has long been hard for me to 
     see how a constitutional amendment would bring about such 
     balancing. (I have discussed this matter at length in my 
     constitutional commentaries. The best argument for such an 
     amendment that I know is that Senator Paul Simon, who grew up 
     as I did in Southern Illinois, has advocated it.)
       So much, at least for the time being, for the amendments 
     that would not work. Then there are the proposed amendments 
     that could ``work''--and that we would come to regret in 
     their operations. First, there is a School Prayer Amendment. 
     The Supreme Court may well have been mistaken in its 
     interpretations here and elsewhere of the Religion Clauses of 
     the First Amendment since the Second World War. But, in our 
     present circumstances, legislative or other official battles 
     over the appropriate prayers for school children are not 
     likely to be edifying, especially as demands come to be made 
     for equal time for all kinds of bizarre cults. When Johnny 
     comes home with a heretical prayer he has been taught at 
     school, to say nothing of a blood-curdling Satanic 
     incantation, his parents' enthusiasm for school prayers is 
     likely to be moderated.
       Also likely to be moderated is the enthusiasm of citizens 
     for term limitations once they see what happens when Congress 
     (and hence the country) comes to be run by amateurs--or by 
     the bureaucrats and lobbyists upon whom desperate amateurs 
     will have to rely for guidance. It is somewhat reassuring 
     that the Republican leadership of the current Congress has 
     had enough sense to reconsider its 1994 campaign promises 
     with respect to term limitations. This reminds us how 
     maturity and self-interest can sometimes work together for 
     the common good.


                                  iii

       Somewhat immature and hence irresponsible, however, has 
     been the current leadership's whooping it up for a Flag 
     Desecration Amendment, something that has been advocated as 
     well, at one time or another, by forty-nine of our State 
     legislatures.
       How odd it is that we make as much as we do now and then of 
     flag desecration. I am reminded of how some newspapermen in 
     Philadelphia conducted themselves back in, I believe, the 
     1930s, perhaps about the time that Colonel McCormick was in 
     his prime in Chicago. When things got boring in Philadelphia 
     they stirred up readers by concocting and publishing a letter 
     from a self-proclaimed cat-hater who announced that he had 
     taken to killing trespassing cats and using them to fertilize 
     his tomato garden. This announcement ignited a heated 
     controversy in the ``Letters to the Editor'' section of the 
     newspaper for weeks thereafter. The more indignant cat-lovers 
     did not notice that their original villain had signed himself 
     McMurder. I have been told that it became an annual exercise 
     for McMurder to stir things up still another time by 
     publishing a letter which said, in effect, ``You should see 
     my tomatoes this year!''
       Comparable to the bloodthirsty McMurder, I suppose, is the 
     Supreme Court's opinion in the 1989 Johnson v. Texas flag-
     burning case. That case which originated with a deplorable 
     political protest by one Gregory Lee Johnson here in Dallas 
     during the 1984 Republican National Convention. The Court 
     divided 5 to 4, with something to be said on each side of 
     this controversy. (It is intriguing that the conservative 
     Justice Scalia supplied one of the voted for Justice 
     Brennan's Opinion for the Court invalidating the State law 
     pursuant to which Mr. Johnson had been convicted.) Still, I 
     should say that certain public acts--like burning flags, 
     conducting street marches, and spending large sums of money 
     on political campaigns--are more than the speech protected by 
     the First Amendment, however much they are intended to 
     support or even to express political sentiments.
       Such conduct can be highly provocative and otherwise 
     disruptive--and as such should be subject to regulation by 
     any government properly concerned about tranquility and 
     political propriety. The flag-burner, in any event, should 
     not be surprised by the passions he arouses. (The emotions 
     stirred up are akin to those exhibited in the somewhat 
     demagogic talk we here from time to time about making English 
     the ``official language'' in this country.)
       However well-intentioned those citizens may be who propose 
     amendments to insure balanced budgets, sacrosanct flags, and 
     the like, the effect of such amendments can be that of 
     desecrating the Constitution by defacing it with ill-
     conceived amendments. For example, the Balanced Budget 
     Amendment proposal currently before Congress is something of 
     an abomination in its draftsmanship. That, at least, is not 
     the principal problem with the current Flag Desecration 
     Amendment proposal, which reads simply ``The Congress and the 
     States shall have power to prohibit the physical desecration 
     of the flag of the United States.'' An inventory of the 
     difficulties with this proposal can well begin with the 
     observation there heretofore the Constitution has been the 
     only thing held up in the Constitution itself as virtually 
     sacred, with even an oath to support it prescribed by the 
     Framers. Certainly, the Flag was never thus provided for, 
     however unfortunate (if not even insulting and otherwise 
     despicable) certain conduct directed at the Flag may be. One 
     may even wonder whether the way the Flag is promoted at times 
     is contrary to the spirit of the constitutional prohibition 
     of religious tests.


                                   IV

       A number of serious problems with various proposed Flag 
     Desecration Amendments have been noticed over the years. But 
     there is one problem that is perhaps the most serious--and it 
     may be revealing of current deficiencies in constitutional 
     interpretation and in political philosophy that it is, so far 
     as I know, never noticed.
       That is, the proposed amendment now being considered by 
     Congress virtually implies that all other forms of 
     desecration are to be considered generally immune from any 
     governmental supervision. If this amendment is regarded as 
     truly necessary to authorize legislation prohibiting and 
     punishing flag desecrations, then there can be tacitly 
     immunized all other desecrations that the United States or 
     the States might want to continue to regulate (such as 
     hateful speaking, the vandalizing of cemeteries, cross 
     burnings, or the defacing of other recognized religious 
     symbols). There could be inadvertently confirmed, by the 
     implications of a Flag Desecration Amendment, a long-term 
     tendency in this country to deprive the sacred of all 
     government support and protection. That is, we are in effect 
     told, in effect, by this amendment that unless government 
     is explicitly authorized by the Constitution to prohibit 
     any particular form of desecration, it cannot do anything 
     about it but may act against conduct that, say, injuries 
     another's property or threatens an immediate breach of the 
     peace.
       This approach to community life is consistent with the 
     tendency, to which many would-be conservatives are 
     contributing, which threatens to undermine a general respect 
     for government. We hear too much talk these days about what 
     government is doing to us--as if a government is never to be 
     regarded as the means by which we govern ourselves. This is 
     hardly a prudential approach to keeping modern republicanism 
     healthy and useful.


                                   v

       One question that the prudent citizen should be asking here 
     is whether there is indeed a serious problem deserving the 
     attention of a constitutional amendment. The House of 
     Representatives has already passed the current Flag 
     Desecration Amendment proposal, 312-120. We now have to hope 
     that the Senate will be sensible.
       What is the harm being addressed by such an amendment? 
     Perhaps no more than a dozen flag-burnings a year--in a bad 
     year. Whether it is a bad year depends, in large part, upon 
     the publicity available for flag-burners--and that depends, 
     in turn, upon whether a burning is apt to provoke an 
     indictment and then a prosecution. Thus, one practical effect 
     of the Supreme Court's 1978 decision in Johnson versus Texas 
     has been to discourage flag-burnings. It is likely, 
     therefore, that if a Flag Desecration Amendment should be 
     ratified there would eventually be more publicized flag-
     burnings than we have had since 1989.
       If, however, nothing is done to amend the Constitution 
     here, things will probably remain as they are now. It should 
     be recognized, by the way, that the deliberate flag-burner 
     these days (even if no law can touch him) does run the risk 
     of being immediately manhandled by the citizens in his 
     vicinity that he dares to offend--and this is probably the 
     way these matters should be left.
       It is odd in any event to be as concerned as we can be 
     about something so rare and usually so inconsequential as 
     flag-burning when so much else is permitted to corrupt us 
     unimpeded, beginning with the blatant sexual and violent 
     indulgences portrayed by the mass media. Symptomatic of this 
     deterioration is the headline in this morning's Dallas 
     Morning News: ``TV, movies test sex's appeal to mainstream 
     audiences: As barriers fall, many wonder, what's next?'' (By 
     Tom Maurstad and Beth Pinsker, Sept. 17, 1995, p. 1A.) 
     Constitutional government cannot be expected to prosper if 
     our citizen body should be rendered unfit by having its 
     passion and sensibilities twisted out of shape. Once this 
     happens it will not do much good--and indeed may even make 
     matters worse--to rely more and more upon prisons and capital 
     punishment to subject ourselves once again to a proper 
     discipline (especially when, as now, our criminal-justice 
     system is overworked because of a deeply-flawed drugs-control 
     policy). Nor will it do any good, and may make matters worse, 
     to rely more and more upon private arsenals to protect 
     ourselves from the consequences of the degradation of all too 
     many of our fellow citizens.

[[Page E 1967]]

       In critical respects the Pro-Choice people and the Pro-Guns 
     people share a somewhat naive reliance upon extremist self-
     help principles grounded in uninhibited property rights. This 
     sort of thing is reflected as well in such displays as the 
     shameless advertisements (as in this morning's Parade 
     magazine) by tobacco companies which are designed to trap 
     impressionable youngsters in a deadly addiction (See ``Your 
     Basic 3-Piece Suit,'' Parade Magazine, Sept. 17, 1995, p. 
     20.) A self-respecting, and self-confident, community should 
     be able to supervise, with a view to the common good, the 
     uses (private as well as public) of all of the property 
     that it makes possible and protects.


                                   vi

       Before I conclude these remarks I return, however briefly, 
     to a much-needed lesson in the proper mode of constitutional 
     interpretation. The Johnson v. Texas decision turned on a 
     reading of the First Amendment. Although I continue to have 
     reservations about that reading, it should be acknowledged 
     that there was something valid in what the majority of the 
     Supreme Court said on that occasion. There is a serious First 
     Amendment problem whenever only a few of many instances of 
     any type of offensive action are selected for prosecution--
     those few which are accompanied by, or are understood to 
     convey, sentiments particularly disliked by the local 
     prosecutor or by his constituents.
       There are lots of offensive things done with the Flag these 
     days, most of them much more serious (if only they are much 
     more pervasive) than what results from a rare flag-burning. 
     We have learned to put up with considerable routine abuse of 
     the Flag, much of it for commercial purposes. (The nearest 
     illustration for us on this campus is what may be seen a few 
     hundred yards away from this hall--a Texas Stadium 
     representation of the Flag with the slogan ``Just Do It'' 
     defacing it.) This epidemic of flag abuse is rather sad, 
     especially when I remember how we used to cheer the Flag when 
     it appeared in movie theatre newsreels during the Second 
     World War.
       Be that as it may, the Congressional proponents of the 
     contemplated Flag Desecration Amendment assure us that it is 
     not intended to repeal the First Amendment. This means that 
     critical freedom-of-speech challenges will be posed whenever 
     prosecutors can be shown to ignore almost all flag 
     desecrations but those accompanied or expressing sentiments 
     they find personally offensive. Equal protection challenges 
     can also be expected to highly selective enforcement of State 
     laws.
       Traffic laws, for example, are clearly constitutional. Yet 
     the policeman who stops only those speeders displaying bumper 
     stickers he does not like can expect to have his policy of 
     selective enforcement seriously challenged on several 
     constitutional grounds. The fact that there is a 
     constitutional amendment authorizing a general enforcement 
     policy may not matter. We once had a Prohibition Amendment--
     but if a prosecutor had enforced prohibition laws only 
     against his political opponents substantial constitutional 
     challenges should have been expected.
       All this is aside from the technical problems of what ``the 
     flag of the United States'' should be taken to mean and how 
     ``physical desecration'' should be understood. What, for 
     example, can be done with a protester who displays a flag 
     that is canceled like the flags we are accustomed to seeing 
     on postage stamps--or with a protester who burns publicly 
     such a blow-up (but even larger) as I have provided you this 
     evening of canceled flag-decorated postage stamps? Would it 
     matter if the burning was of uncancelled flag-stamp blow-ups? 
     So much then, at least for the time being, for this lesson in 
     constitutional interpretation--and in the limits, as well as 
     the merits, of reliance upon constitutions to cure our ills.
       The perspective from which I have attempted to speak on 
     this occasion has been that of the informed and responsible 
     citizen. At times, of course, the responsible citizen can be 
     disheartened, especially as he observes how determined all 
     too many of his no doubt patriotic fellow citizens can be to 
     plunge ahead with amendments that would disfigure if not even 
     derail the Constitution. If things get bad enough, with a 
     constitutional pile-up threatened, the powerless student of 
     such appallingly interesting matters can at least console 
     himself with a story that Lyndon Johnson used to tell:
       ``There was a fellow in Johnson City who wanted to be a 
     district engineer. To test him, the boss asked what he would 
     do if he saw two trains coming at each other on a single 
     track at 60 miles an hour. The fellow thought about it for a 
     while and said, `I'd go home and get my brother.'
       `` `Why would you do that?' The boss asked.
       `` `My brother ain't even seen a train wreck,' he said.''
     (Liz Carpenter, ed., ``LBJ: Images of a Vibrant Life'' 
     [Austin, Texas: The Friends of the LBJ Library, 1973], p. 14) 
     We can wonder whether Mr. Johnson ever consoled himself in 
     turn with at least having had a ringside seat for the train-
     wreck of a war that he (with perhaps the most patriotic of 
     intentions) stumbled into a Southeast Asia, a questionable 
     war that also contributed both to the disfigurement of the 
     Constitution and to the demoralization of the American 
     people.


                                  vii

       I have used the current Flag Desecration Amendment campaign 
     to suggest what the Constitution should mean to us. In this 
     way, at least, even this misguided campaign can be put to 
     salutary use.
       Much of what I have said this evening about how the 
     Constitution needs to be treated should have long been 
     apparent to the more mature members of Congress. They should 
     know that a cheap form of patriotism is being indulged in by 
     some of their amendments-hungry colleagues at the risk of 
     desecrating the Constitution itself. All this should remind 
     us of how a disciplined and sensible legislative body 
     operates. For one thing, it keeps certain excesses safely 
     under control in its committees, having learned long ago how 
     public opinion can be misled.
       I presume to pay special tribute to one member of the House 
     of Representatives, a Democrat from Indiana (Andrew Jacobs), 
     who tried last January to salvage something from his 
     colleagues' recent stampede by offering to add to the Flag 
     Desecration Amendment the provision that the spending of 
     money for the election of public officials no longer be 
     considered constitutionally-protected speech either. (See 141 
     Congressional Record H176, January 4, 1995.) He reminded us 
     thereby of still another unfortunate First Amendment reading 
     by the Supreme Court, its 1976 ruling in Buckley v. Valeo. 
     That ruling undermined what Congress had tried to do, a 
     generation ago, to control campaign financing in this 
     country. I continue to believe that the First Amendment 
     should not be understood to keep us from experimenting with 
     reasonable measures to prevent our elections from being 
     bought or from seeming to be bought by excessive expenditures 
     of funds, whether by private persons, by corporations, 
     unions, and other organizations, or by the government itself.
       But even the serious mistake by the Supreme Court in the 
     Buckley Case does not warrant a constitutional amendment. 
     Rather Congress should try again and again--and we in turn 
     should all try to help the Court to recognize what it too 
     truly wants to recognize; the true reading of the 
     Constitution.
       In this worthy enterprise in civic education, the Politics 
     Department of the University of Dallas should continue to be 
     among the leaders in our country today. You are to be 
     congratulated for celebrating Constitution Day as you do, 
     with both playful festivities and serious talk, reminding us 
     thereby that the Constitution depends upon and ministers to 
     both the high and the low. Such a celebration, you also know, 
     is most meaningful when it can include an examination of what 
     the Constitution does and does not say. It is to such an 
     examination, at least in part, that we have dedicated 
     ourselves on this inspiring occasion.

                          ____________________