[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 45 (Thursday, March 28, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3149-S3150]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           THE FLAG AMENDMENT

  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, the February, 1996 issue of the American 
Legion Magazine contains a column entitled, ``We Will Continue To Stand 
By Our Flag,'' by Daniel A. Ludwig, national commander of the American 
Legion. As my colleagues know, the American Legion, other veterans and 
civics groups, the Citizens Flag Alliance, and countless individuals 
undertook an effort to pass a constitutional amendment authorizing 
protection of the American flag. There was nothing in it for any of the 
participants in that great effort. This effort fell just short in the 
Senate. But, I note that in 1989 an amendment received 51 votes; in 
1990, 58 votes; and in 1995, 63 votes. In the other body, the effort 
went from falling short in 1989 to an overwhelming win in 1995.
  I said in December that the effort to enact a constitutional 
amendment authorizing protection of the American flag will be back. And 
so it will, as the column by Commander Ludwig makes clear. I ask 
unanimous consent that the column be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

             [From the American Legion Magazine, Feb. 1996]

                 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 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 asked 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

[[Page S3150]]

     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.
  Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, on the Op Ed page of today's edition of the 
New York Times there is a column I want to call to my colleagues' 
attention entitled ``Line-Item Lunacy'' by David Samuels. Even though 
the current debate on this matter is over for now, I encourage my 
fellow Senators to take the time to read this thoughtful opinion. Mr. 
President, to that end, I ask unanimous consent that the column be 
printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the column was ordered to be printed in the 
Record, as follows:

                [From the New York Times, Mar. 28, 1996]

                            Line-Item Lunacy

                           (By David Samuels)

       It's a scene from a paranoid thriller by Oliver Stone: A 
     mercurial billionaire, elected President with 35 percent of 
     the vote, holds America hostage to his minority agenda by 
     vetoing item after item in the Federal budget, in open breach 
     of the separation of powers doctrine enshrined in the 
     Constitution. Impossible? Not anymore.
       With the announcement by Republican leaders that they plan 
     to pass the line-item veto this spring, the specter of a 
     Napoleonic Presidency has moved from the far reaches of poli-
     sci fiction, where it belongs, to the brink of political 
     possibility.
       At the moment, of course, a Presidential dictatorship is 
     far from the minds of the G.O.P. leadership and White House 
     Democrats, who hope that the line-item veto would encourage 
     the President to eliminate pork-barrel giveaways and 
     corporate tax breaks. But to see the measure as a simple 
     procedural reform is to ignore the forces that have 
     reconfigured the political landscape since it was first 
     proposed.
       Back in the 1980's, President Ronald Reagan ritually 
     invoked the line-item veto while shifting blame onto a 
     Democratic Congress for ballooning deficits. Part Republican 
     chestnut, part good-government gimmick, the line-item veto 
     became part of the Contract With America in 1994, and this 
     month rose to the top of the political agenda.
       What the calculations of Democrats and Republicans leave 
     out, however, is that the unsettled politics of the 1990's 
     bear little relation to the political order of the Reagan 
     years.
       In poll after poll, a majority of voters express a raging 
     disaffection with both major parties. With Ross Perot poised 
     to run in November, we could again elect our President with a 
     minority of the popular vote (in 1992, Mr. Clinton won with 
     43 percent). The line-item veto would hand over unchecked 
     power to a minority President with minority support in 
     Congress, while opponents would have to muster two-thirds 
     support to override the President's veto.
       By opening every line in the Federal budget to partisan 
     attack, the likely result would be a chaotic legislature more 
     susceptible than ever to obstructionists who could demand a 
     Presidential veto of Federal arts funding or sex education 
     programs or aid to Israel as the price of their political 
     support.
       And conservatives eager to cut Government waste would do 
     well to reflect on what a liberal minority might do to their 
     legislative hopes during a second Clinton term in office.
       Nor would the line-item veto likely result in more 
     responsible executive behavior. The zigs and zags of Bill 
     Clinton's first term in office give us a clear picture of the 
     post-partisan Presidency, in which the executive freelances 
     across the airwaves in pursuit of poll numbers regardless of 
     the political coherence of his message or the decaying ties 
     of party. With the adoption of the line-item veto, the 
     temptation for Presidents to strike out on their own would 
     surely grow.
       The specter of a President on horseback armed with coercive 
     powers might seem far away to those who dismissed Ross Perot 
     as a freak candidate in the last election. Yet no law states 
     that power-hungry billionaires must be possessed of Mr. 
     Perot's peculiar blend of personal qualities and doomed to 
     fail. Armed with the line-item veto, a future Ross Perot--or 
     Steve Forbes--would be equipped with the means to reward and 
     punish members of the House and Senate by vetoing individual 
     budget items. This would enable an independent President to 
     build a coalition in Congress through a program of threats 
     and horse-trading that would make our present sorely flawed 
     system seem like a model of Ciceronian rectitude.
       President Clinton has promised to sign the line-item veto 
     when it reaches his desk. Between now and then, the historic 
     breach of our constitutional separation of powers that the 
     measure proposes should be subject to a vigorous public 
     debate. At the very least, we might reflect on how we intend 
     to govern ourselves at a time when the certainties of two-
     party politics are dissolving before our eyes.
  Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, Mr. Samuels eloquently points out just one 
of the many concerns this country could very well face with the 
adoption of this legislation. He focuses on what might happen should 
our two-party system dissolve and allow for a rogue individual to be 
elected president by a minority of the American people. In this 
scenario, the possibility of a tyrannical oppressor freely and 
recklessly wielding power has to be considered. While at the present 
time the likelihood of such an event seems farfetched, it is just this 
type of concern that we elected members of the people's branch must 
consider.
  Indeed, if there is one bright spot on this day after Senate passage 
of S. 4, it is that in eight years the Congress will revisit this 
issue. It is my hope that at that time, wisdom will prevail.

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