Respect the American flag

By Ethan Wellman

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Over the past few weeks, we as U.S. citizens have seen what it is like to experience pain and confusion with the bombings in Boston and the fertilizer plant fire in West, Texas.

I am a 21-year-old college student and have experienced these and many other painful experiences, including the 9/11 attacks. I also have family members who were alive during World War II and the Korean, Vietnam and Cold wars. After each one of them, the United States as a country has persevered because of the principles it was founded upon in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution - and symbolized in the star spangled banner.

This year, it will be 24 years since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled it was a constitutional right to burn the American flag, based on the First Amendment's free speech right. Since then, there have been six resolutions passed by the House to have a flag-desecration amendment added to the Constitution, but only three times has the Senate voted and each time it failed by a close margin.

This issue needs to be brought up in Congress again. W need to protect the enduring symbol of America and realize that burning the flag should not be constituted as free speech.

The Declaration of Independence, Emancipation Proclamation and the Constitution and its amendments add to our nation's history, but it is the flag that represents all of these and American citizens alike. It is the American flag, not the state flag, to which we pledge our loyalty. It is this flag that covers the caskets of our fallen soldiers; this flag that is raised when we win a gold medal in the Olympics.

It is the symbol that our national anthem embodies because we want to be loyal to the “land of the free, and the home of the brave.” Burning the flag “is the equivalent of an inarticulate grunt or roar that, it seems fair to say, is most likely to be indulged in not to express any particular idea, but to antagonize others” as Chief Justice Rehnquist said in his dissent in the 1989 Texas v. Johnson case.

The argument of “symbolic speech” is a relatively new idea that has been fought in the courts only since the 1960s. Before then, people understood that speech occurred when someone spoke in protest. The First Amendment lists rights including freedom of religion, press, assembly, petition and speech. It does not say symbolic speech.

Every time I see an American flag burned in protest, it feels like the history of America and the people who created that history are being disrespected.

Let's step up and use our right to free speech by telling our congressmen that an amendment to protect flag needs to be passed.

Ethan Wellman of La Porte City is a spring graduate of Iowa State University with a bachelor's degree in speech communication. Comments: ethan.wellmn@gmail.com