Burnout

The vote in the Senate for a resolution to amend the Constitution to empower Congress to enact laws to prevent desecration of the American flag failed. By one vote.

You can see how your Senators voted here.

Some interesting highlights:

• Joe Lieberman voted against the amendment resolution. A cynic might label this as a cheap bone tossed to us lefty bloggers, but given that the vote was so close, I'll take his stance as true on this issue. Say it is so, Joe.



• John McCain voted for it. (You're not still conned by that "every Democrat's favorite Republican" image, are you?) Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island is the only not completely heinous Republican that I know of -- he voted against.



• Hillary Clinton continued her never-ending efforts to alienate voters on both sides, first sponsoring a bill to make flag burning illegal, but then voting against the amendment resolution. Her supporters spin this as some kind of "third way" thinking. I say it's trying to have it both ways, and it's reprehensible. I also say it will be easy for rightwingnuts to spin this as more "I supported it before I was against it" flip-flopping. Wasn't she supposed to be the smart one?



• Mitch McConnell (R-KY) voted against. The New York Times says he "is in line to become the Republican leader in the next Congress, and he opposes the initiative on free speech grounds." I say it would be really, really nice if we didn't have to go throught this nonsense every July 4th, so I cling to that Times sentence ferociously, with irrational exuberance.

The Times article speculated that if the resolution ever passed the Senate, there is a good chance that it would become an amendment -- at least 38 states, the required three-fourths majority, would likely approve it. (The House apparently always manages its own required two-thirds majority.)

My moral sense on the issue is this: I appreciate the power of symbols, and I can't see myself setting a flag on fire, purely because it is so offensive to some people. I'd find some other way to demonstrate my protest. Analogously, I am an agnostic, but I try not to say "goddam."

However, and much more importantly, the ideals represented by the American flag don't mean much to me if I'm told that I can't burn it. I suspect I'm not alone in this view.

Practically speaking, we are not exactly suffering an epidemic of flag-burning. Even the head of the American Legion's effort to pass the amendment admitted recently that he had never in his life seen a flag on fire. And aren't Republicans always crowing that they are the party that favors small government and opposes needless regulation?

I'll make this prediction right now: If the vote ever does pass the Senate, and gets sent to the individual states for ratification, then far more flags will be burned during the nationwide fight than were ever burned in the 1960s.

People who have this strange fetish for the sanctity of a specific piece of cloth might want to consider that.