The Wake

Luckily, we live in a country that gives us controversial books like “Of Mice and Men” by John Steinbeck, “The Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger and “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” by Maya Angelou, all of which faced the threat of banning. It also gives us the right to burn an American flag.

Or does it? Enter the controversy over flag burning.

In the latest attempt to spurn the U.S. Supreme Court, a certain Rep. Jerry Dempsey (R), introduced a resolution to say that Minnesota Legislature really, really doesn’t like it when people burn American flags.

Dempsey has taken it upon himself to make us journey back to the days prior to a 1989 U.S. Supreme Court ruling on Texas v. Johnson, which made prosecuting someone for burning the American flag a violation of First Amendment rights.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, this is what your hard-earned tax dollars are allowing your local legislators to spend their time talking about. Not higher tuition rates. Not better roads. Not health care or even toll roads on W-394. Instead the legislature, in all its higher wisdom, chooses to spend time drafting and debating a resolution about flag burning.

So what is a resolution anyway? Although official dictionary texts cite something about it being a formal declaration of will or opinion on some matter by a governmental body, I can boil it down to the basics. I would equate a resolution to a petition signed by Congress (or some other legislative body).

Remember petitions? They’re the things some girl tried to get you to sign in high school to say that school lunch sucked or that she didn’t like the homecoming queen. No, I’m not trivializing them—petitions don’t actually do anything. That includes when they’re signed by elected officials. Unlike laws, resolutions have no legally binding authority.

Dempsey thinks this valuable petition would be, “giving back the rights that were taken away by the Supreme Court.”

Yeah, those sadistic Supreme Court bastards. Who gave them the right to decide how things in America should be? Oh yeah. It was that damned Constitution.

Here’s the thing about flag burning: the reason people get so fired up (excuse the pun) about it in the first place is that it protects freedoms that not everyone in the world enjoys. Those freedoms include flag burning under the classification of “free speech.”

How does it go again? “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”

So I guess the loophole is to make a resolution.

Speaking of loopholes, here’s a doozy from good ol’ Louisiana: apparently, there is legislation making it illegal to prosecute anyone who assaults a flag burner.

If you want to associate yourself with Louisiana, go ahead.

The typical response to flag-burners is a love-it-or-leave-it attitude. Such acts are quickly labeled anti-American and in some cases may be equated with terrorism.

But if you listen to a Minnesota representative named Leon Lillie (DFL), you discover that he is a “flag-waving democrat.” In fact, Lillie said during a governmental operations committee meeting (which are free and open to the public) that, “I personally have some problems with our Constitution.”

Now who’s anti-American?

Kay Steiger is the campus editor for The Wake and welcomes comments at office@wakenews.org.