[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 25 (Wednesday, February 28, 1996)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E231-E232]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       STAND BY THE AMERICAN FLAG

                                 ______


                        HON. GERALD B.H. SOLOMON

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, February 28, 1996

  Mr. SOLOMON. Mr. Speaker, last year this Congress came so close to 
restoring the American flag to its rightful position of honor and 
glory. You might remember that an overwhelming majority of my 
colleagues in the House agreed with the overwhelming majority of the 
American people and voted in favor of my proposed constitutional 
amendment allowing States and the Federal Government to prohibit the 
despicable destruction of Old Glory. Unfortunately, just three Senators 
couldn't find it in their heart to stand up for the Stars and Stripes 
and provide the constitutional protection that is necessary.
  Mr. Speaker, let me tell you, this fight isn't over yet and it won't 
be over until we win. Just to demonstrate the support behind that 
statement, allow me to submit the following piece from the American 
Legion's National Commander Daniel Ludwig for the Record as evidence of 
that organization's resolve to correct this gross injustice. It was the 
American Legion and the Citizens Flag Alliance who carried the flag and 
the flag amendment to within three votes of this ultimate protection. 
Well, Mr. Speaker, just like you might expect out of a crew of old 
warriors, they're not going to surrender.

                 We Will Continue To Stand by Our Flag

                         (By Daniel A. Ludwig)

       By the time you read this, the postmortems on the Senate 
     vote on the flag amendment will largely have subsided. The 
     media may finally have stopped smirking their smirks of 
     (supposed) intellectual superiority. The constitutional 
     scholars who were thrust into an unaccustomed limelight will 
     have gone back to their universities to continue the debate 
     in quieter fashion. The public-interest groups who took sides 
     against us--and, we always believed, against the public 
     interest--will have turned their attention to other cherished 
     aspects of traditional American life that need to be 
     ``modernized,'' which is to say, cheapened or twisted or 
     gutted altogether.
       Observers have suggested that we, too, should give up the 
     fight. Enough is enough, they say. ``You gave it your best, 
     now it's time to pack it in.'' Those people don't understand 
     what the past six years, since the 1989 Supreme Court 
     decision, have really been about.
       From the beginning of our efforts, debate centered on the 
     issue of free speech and whether the proposed amendment 
     infringes on it. But whether flag desecration is free speech, 
     or an abuse of free speech, as Orrin Hatch suggests (and we 
     agree), there is a larger point here that explains why we 
     can't--shouldn't--just fold up our tents and go quietly.
       Our adversaries have long argued that opposition to the 
     amendment is not the same as opposition to the flag itself, 
     that it's possible to love the flag and yet vote against 
     protecting it. Perhaps in the best of all possible worlds we 
     could accept such muddled thinking.
       Sadly, we do not live in the best of all possible worlds.
       In the best of all possible worlds it would not be 
     necessary to install metal detectors in public schools, or 
     have drunk-driving checkpoints on our highways, or give 
     mandatory drug tests to prospective airline employees. 
     Indeed, in the best of all possible 

[[Page E232]]
     worlds, the Pope would not have to make his rounds in a bulletproof 
     vehicle. In all of these cases, we have willingly made 
     certain sacrifices in freedom because we recognize that 
     there are larger interests at stake. In the case of the 
     metal detectors, for example, the safety of our children, 
     and our teachers, and the establishment of a stable 
     climate for instruction to take place, is paramount.
       If the flag amendment is about anything, it's about holding 
     the line on respect, on the values that you and I risked our 
     lives to preserve. We live in a society that respects little 
     and honors still less. Most, if not all, of today's ills can 
     be traced to a breakdown in respect--for laws, for 
     traditions, for people, for the things held sacred by the 
     great bulk of us.
       Just as the godless are succeeding at removing God from 
     everyday life, growing numbers of people have come to feel 
     they're not answerable to anything larger than themselves. 
     The message seems to be that nothing takes priority over the 
     needs and desires and ``rights'' of the individual. Nothing 
     is forbidden. Everything is permissible, from the shockingly 
     vulgar music that urges kids to go out and shoot cops, to 
     ``art'' that depicts Christ plunging into a vat of urine--to 
     the desecration of a cherished symbol like the U.S. Flag.
       Are these really the freedoms our forefathers envisioned 
     when they drafted the Bill of Rights? Thomas Jefferson 
     himself did not regard liberty as a no-strings proposition. 
     His concept of democracy presupposed a nation of honorable 
     citizens. Remove the honorable motives from a free society 
     and what you have left is not democracy, but anarchy. What 
     you have left, eventually, is ``Lord of the Flies.''
       Amid all this, the flag stands for something. If respect 
     for the flag were institutionalized, and children were 
     brought up to understand the unique collection of principles 
     it represents, there would be inevitable benefits to society, 
     benefits that would help turn the tide of today's chaos and 
     disrespect. For no one who takes such principles to heart--no 
     one who sees the flag as an untouchable symbol of democracy, 
     of decency--could possibly do the things that some people do, 
     these days, in the name of freedom.
       The flag stands for something miraculous that took life 
     upon these shores more than two centuries ago and, if we only 
     let it, will live on for centuries more. It stands for a 
     glorious idea that has survived every challenge, that has 
     persevered in the face of external forces who promised to 
     ``bury'' us and internal forces which promised to tear us 
     apart. Let us never forget this.
       And let us not forget that 63 out of 99 senators voted with 
     us, or that we won over 375 legislators in total. Our efforts 
     were no more wasted than were the efforts to take remote 
     outposts in the Pacific a half-century ago. Those efforts, 
     too, failed at first, but eventually we prevailed.
       We undertook a noble fight in trying to save our flag, and 
     the fact that we have suffered a temporary setback does not 
     diminish the nobility of what we fought for. This is not over 
     by a long shot. They will hear from us again.

                          ____________________