Word for Word/The Flag Bulletin;Two Centuries of Burning Flags, A Few Years of Blowing Smoke (original) (raw)
Week in Review|Word for Word/The Flag Bulletin;Two Centuries of Burning Flags, A Few Years of Blowing Smoke
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- Dec. 17, 1995
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December 17, 1995
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Section 4, Page
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LAST Tuesday, the Senate narrowly defeated a constitutional amendment to outlaw flag desecration. The vote of 63 for the amendment and 36 against it fell just shy of the two-thirds majority necessary for passage. (The House has already passed a broader version of the amendment.)
How times have changed. The first flag desecration laws (most of which were passed between 1897 and 1905 by individual states) were not to stop political dissidents from burning flags. According to Robert Justin Goldstein, the author of "Saving Old Glory" (Westview, 1995) and the forthcoming book "Burning the Flag" (Kent State), these laws (all states had them by 1932) were intended to prevent the use of flag imagery for political campaigns and for commercial and advertising purposes -- uses that are now seen as patriotic.
History also shows that flag burning has never been epidemic in this country. Mr. Goldstein, of Ann Arbor, Mich., who teaches political science at Oakland University in Rochester, Mich., says he was able to turn up records showing "fewer than 45 reported incidents of flag burnings . . . in all of American history between the adoption of the United States flag in 1777 and the Texas v. Johnson Supreme Court decision in 1989," which declared that politically motivated flag desecration is protected under the First Amendment. "About half of those incidents occurred in a single five-year period, 1966 to 1970, and were overwhelmingly associated with protests against the Vietnam War," he said.
Here is a sampling of Mr. Goldstein's list of burnings, published in the March-April 1995 issue of The Flag Bulletin, the publication of the Flag Research Center. SARAH BOXER
May 10, 1861. Liberty, Miss. Flag burned in protests against President Lincoln's decision to suppress Confederate states' secession from the United States.
Oct. 31, 1896. Sedalia, Mo. Flag used as part of demonstration in support of Republican Presidential candidate William McKinley reportedly seized and burned by supporter of Democratic-Populist candidate William Jennings Bryan.
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