Photo: moonstarsilverwolf Jeffrey Toobin‘s recent New Yorker profile of John Paul Stevens, the retiring leading-liberal Supreme Court Justice, is interesting throughout, and contains this nugget:
Stevens’s Second World War experience also played a part in perhaps his most anomalous opinion as a Justice. In 1989, he dissented from the decision that protected the right to burn the American flag as a form of protest. “The ideas of liberty and equality have been an irresistible force in motivating leaders like Patrick Henry, Susan B. Anthony, and Abraham Lincoln, schoolteachers like Nathan Hale and Booker T. Washington, the Philippine Scouts who fought at Bataan, and the soldiers who scaled the bluff at Omaha Beach,” he wrote in an unusually lyrical dissent. “If those ideas are worth fighting for-and our history demonstrates that they are-it cannot be true that the flag that uniquely symbolizes their power is not itself worthy of protection.”
“The funny thing about that case is, the only consequence of it-nobody burns flags anymore,” Stevens told me. “It was an important symbolic form of protest at the time. But nobody does it anymore. As long as it’s legal, it’s not a big deal. You just don’t have flag burning.”
Question: is the lack of flag burning truly, as Stevens puts it, a “consequence” of the law? I often wonder where all the civic unrest and rioting in U.S. cities has gone, especially with the increase in income inequality. Should we be looking to Supreme Court explanations for that as well? Or are there perhaps much, much broader and more numerous forces at work?
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US Flag Code. TITLE 4 > CHAPTER 1 > Sec. 8(k):
The flag, when it is in such condition that it is no longer a fitting emblem for display, should be destroyed in a dignified way, preferably by burning.
So, sounds like you’re required by law to burn the flag.
Ben, you’re just trying to be difficult.
Flag burning in a formal ceremony, of an old and tattered flag is respectful. Flag burning in protest is disrespectful. Personally, I think people should have the right to be disrespectful – I’d never burn a flag, but the choice should be available.
I think flag burning, or the lack thereof, is more affected by social norms than legal allowances.
The flag code is law, but there are no penalties for violating the code, thus making it have no teeth.
As for your question, “Where has all the rioting and civic unrest gone?” I think the answer is that we have become so splintered socially that protest groups don’t think they can expect a sympathetic audience in the broad spectrum of society. I also think that is why Americans are less willing to spend money on public universities and infrastructure — the money is perceived to be for some other interest group, not “my people.”
Only a country that tries to outlaw criticism of itself deserves to have its flag burnt. Protecting unpopular forms of speech automatically allows the nation to prevail over those who would try to defame it.
When the fervor over flag burning was going on, I reasoned that while burning a flag in protest should be legal, it was rather stupid. The take-away message I expect people to get from a flag-burning is “He burned a flag!”, not whatever political point the protester was trying to make. In many cases, the people the protester is trying to reach will have stopped listening at that point.
When the method of protest overshadows the message of the protest another method should be considered. I suspect that is what happened with flag burning.
As long as people care more about who wins American Idol than their civil liberties, the Constitution, or Supreme Court decisions, there will be no revolution.
Perhaps a stronger disincentive for Americans themselves to burn the US flag is that in recent years it has become an activity mostly associated with disgruntled Islamists abroad?
Of course, you guys are lucky. Over here, the flag of St George has mostly become associated with soccer hooligans and the Union Flag with unpleasant far-right political parties. Both of these are much more disrespectful than merely burning it!