By
Jonathan Alter
Newsweek
Updated: 2:44 p.m. PT June 22, 2006
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June 22, 2006 - The phrase “litmus test” is in bad odor for good reason: politicians should be judged on a variety of positions, not just one. But deep down, nearly every voter has at least one litmus test—an issue so personally important that a politician who fails the test is forever tainted, or at least excluded from consideration for the presidency.
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I inherited my one litmus test from my father, Jim Alter, who flew 33 harrowing missions over Nazi Germany during World War II. My father is not just a veteran who by all odds should not have survived. He is a true patriot. His litmus test is the proposal to amend the Constitution to ban flag burning, which will come up for a vote next week in the U.S. Senate. For dad—and me—any member of Congress who supports amending the Bill of Rights for the first time in the history of this country for a nonproblem like flag burning is showing serious disrespect for our Constitution and for the values for which brave Americans gave their lives. Such disrespect is a much more serious threat than the random idiots who once every decade or so try (often unsuccessfully) to burn a flag.
Our understandable outrage at flag burning shouldn’t turn our brains to mush. “I feel the same sense of outrage, but I would not amend that great shield of democracy [the Constitution] to hammer a few miscreants,” Colin Powell said when the issue last came up (his position has not changed). “The flag will be flying proudly long after they have slunk away.” Powell argues that a constitutional ban on flag burning is a sign of weakness and fear. Note: The other countries that have banned flag burning include Cuba, China, Iran and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.
John Glenn, another of the thousands of combat veterans against the amendment (they have banded together in a group called Veterans Defending the Bill of Rights), notes that “those 10 amendments we call the Bill of Rights have never been changed or altered by one iota, not by one word, not a single time in all of American history. There was not a single change during any of our foreign wars, and not during recessions or depressions or panics. Not a single change when we were going through times of great emotion and anger like the Vietnam era, when flag after flag was burned or desecrated. There is only one way to weaken our nation. The way to weaken our nation would be to erode the freedom that we all share.”
Actually, even during the Vietnam War, flag burning was rare. By one count, there have been only 45 such incidents in 200 years, and fewer than half a dozen since it was outlawed in 1989. Should the Constitution be amended, however, the incidence of flag burning is expected to surge as a form of civil disobedience. What began as a phony issue designed to prove patriotism (usually on the part of those who never served, the primary sponsors) could become a real concern.
The flag-burning amendment, which already passed the House, is apparently just short of the 67 needed in the Senate. With one or two absences, the amendment would be approved. It would then go to the states for ratification, where its chances for approval appear good.
On the Republican side, all senators except Robert Bennett of Utah, Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky favor the amendment. The rest (including those who should know better, like John McCain and Chuck Hagel) are apparently in favor of trivializing the document they swore to uphold. Banning flag burning, in the words of Justice Antonin Scalia, “dilutes the very freedom that makes this emblem so revered.”
By
Jonathan Alter
Newsweek
Updated: 2:44 p.m. PT June 22, 2006
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June 22, 2006 - The phrase “litmus test” is in bad odor for good reason: politicians should be judged on a variety of positions, not just one. But deep down, nearly every voter has at least one litmus test—an issue so personally important that a politician who fails the test is forever tainted, or at least excluded from consideration for the presidency.
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I inherited my one litmus test from my father, Jim Alter, who flew 33 harrowing missions over Nazi Germany during World War II. My father is not just a veteran who by all odds should not have survived. He is a true patriot. His litmus test is the proposal to amend the Constitution to ban flag burning, which will come up for a vote next week in the U.S. Senate. For dad—and me—any member of Congress who supports amending the Bill of Rights for the first time in the history of this country for a nonproblem like flag burning is showing serious disrespect for our Constitution and for the values for which brave Americans gave their lives. Such disrespect is a much more serious threat than the random idiots who once every decade or so try (often unsuccessfully) to burn a flag.
Our understandable outrage at flag burning shouldn’t turn our brains to mush. “I feel the same sense of outrage, but I would not amend that great shield of democracy [the Constitution] to hammer a few miscreants,” Colin Powell said when the issue last came up (his position has not changed). “The flag will be flying proudly long after they have slunk away.” Powell argues that a constitutional ban on flag burning is a sign of weakness and fear. Note: The other countries that have banned flag burning include Cuba, China, Iran and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.
John Glenn, another of the thousands of combat veterans against the amendment (they have banded together in a group called Veterans Defending the Bill of Rights), notes that “those 10 amendments we call the Bill of Rights have never been changed or altered by one iota, not by one word, not a single time in all of American history. There was not a single change during any of our foreign wars, and not during recessions or depressions or panics. Not a single change when we were going through times of great emotion and anger like the Vietnam era, when flag after flag was burned or desecrated. There is only one way to weaken our nation. The way to weaken our nation would be to erode the freedom that we all share.”
Actually, even during the Vietnam War, flag burning was rare. By one count, there have been only 45 such incidents in 200 years, and fewer than half a dozen since it was outlawed in 1989. Should the Constitution be amended, however, the incidence of flag burning is expected to surge as a form of civil disobedience. What began as a phony issue designed to prove patriotism (usually on the part of those who never served, the primary sponsors) could become a real concern.
The flag-burning amendment, which already passed the House, is apparently just short of the 67 needed in the Senate. With one or two absences, the amendment would be approved. It would then go to the states for ratification, where its chances for approval appear good.
On the Republican side, all senators except Robert Bennett of Utah, Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky favor the amendment. The rest (including those who should know better, like John McCain and Chuck Hagel) are apparently in favor of trivializing the document they swore to uphold. Banning flag burning, in the words of Justice Antonin Scalia, “dilutes the very freedom that makes this emblem so revered.”
