Flag Desecration

Posted on July 29, 2003 in Citizenship

I saw the photo first at Joseph Duemer’s blog, so he gets first credit. Nurse Ratched spotted Chris’s remarks on the incident in which George W. Bush signed his name on an American flag for an American schoolboy.

As a Boy Scout, I learned the same rules that Chris invokes regarding the flag. It’s not a decorative fringe (even for the lunatic fringe). You don’t treat it as another piece of cloth but as a representation of your participation in the American community. We are the stars and stripes: for this reason, we do no harm to a flag.

The People’s reverence for the flag these past 223 years has and will continue to protect it without the force of law. Bush’s action, however, threatens to dilute the power of this symbol as he attempts to equate only his person with the Stars and Stripes. No more than you or I do, does the thief of the White House have any business marring a flag with his name. (And if you can show that Clinton did it, too, the same goes for him.) The flag is not his photograph. It’s the national fabric represented in three colors.

While I do not support the flag amendments to the constitution, I have long voiced my opposition to burning the flag as a protest. I do this as free citizen speaking to other free citizens: I prescribe no laws. I simply declare that it is a stupid idea.

The flag is not the nation, but many people identify with it. When we burn the flag, these people see themselves being destroyed. No pacifist, I believe, wants to send the message that he or she wants other Americans dead. I say leave this kind of demonstration for the wacko fringe like the Revolutionary Communist Party.

I do, on the other hand, endorse a different kind of demonstration using the flag, that of washing it. Stain it with blood. Declare that Bush has thrown blood on us. And then, as a symbol of hope and pacifist renewal, wash the stains from the fabric.

I was present at a flag burning, once. At a Boy Scout Camp. Years of use flapping atop the camp’s flagpole had worn holes in the national symbol.

When a flag grows so battered that it can no longer be flown with dignity, you do not throw it away. You burn it, cremate it as was done with the heroes of old.

The ceremony took place at one of the campwide assemblies when all the troops gathered around the fire circle and took part in a night of songs and skits. At the end of the evening, it was announced that the flag would be burned. Pains were taken to tell the history of the flag and why this had to be done. The tattered cloth was held out for all to see and then, using a knife, the field of blue was separated from the stripes. This was a real flag — one where the parts were individually cut and sewn together, not a print shop job where, if you looked closely, you can see the colors fuzzing into one another. The two parts were laid carefully on the fire. The scouts sat in silence. After the assembly ended, members of the crowd slipped down to the funeral pyre and grabbed little bits of the ash for remembrance.

This is what needs to be done with the flag whose integrity as a symbol has been compromised by Bush’s signing. I recommend that lovers of the flag gather to give it a dignified cremation as I saw. And Bush must — if he is to bear any semblance of representing the people as a spiritual leader — Bush must apologize for his arrogance and his insensitivity.

It’s typical of the man: he mistakes his own personal self-interest and hubris for the good of the nation.