[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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