Flag Protection Amendment is scary, unnecessary, and vague as all get-out

Writing in yesterday's USA Today, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein called for passage of the Flag Protection Amendment. Her rationale, provided by former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Byron White, is that the flag is a "monument," and we would not allow anyone to deface a national monument.

It is quite a stretch to call the U.S. flag a monument. The flag is not an erected structure or an original document ecased in glass, but rather, a reproducible symbol. It also does not symbolize a shared belief--conservatives abandoned the Constitution and the foundations of the republic some time ago. Of course, it is wrong to deface a flag that is flying on a government building, a business, or someone's house. That is vandalism, and is already illegal. I believe in harsh penalties for vandalism, but I do not believe that vandalism of a flag is any worse than vandalism of another part of someone else's property.

Feinstein, in an ambiguous statement that I hope is the fault of a bad copy editor at the newspaper, says:

The Flag Protection Amendment would not prohibit flag burning. Rather, the amendment would simply return to Congress the ability to protect the flag as it has been protected throughout most of this nation's history.

Actually, that is good to know, since part of standard flag etiquette, taught to us when we were children, is that the only proper way to dispose of a flag is to burn it. So if the FPA passes, will all proper burning/disposals of the flag have to be done under cover, or will people have to obtain permits to perform them? The amendment defines neither "flag" nor "desecration." If I have an American flag shirt and I cut it up to make rags to clean my car, am I in violation of the amendment? If I stand on my own property and set fire to my own personal American flag, can my neighbors report me to the police?

The Citizens Flag Alliance, which supports the amendment, lists some truly chilling reasons for supporting it:

It is commonly accepted today that the traditional values upon which our nation was founded and which find tangible expression in our respect for our flag are essential to the smooth functioning of a free society. Flag protection highlights and enhances these values and thus helps to preserve freedom and democratic government.

The government has a fundamental interest in protecting the most basic condition of freedom; our bond to one another in our aspiration for national unity. With traditional unifying elements of American language, culture and heritage fraying, the flag remains a single unifying embodiment of our unceasing struggle for liberty and equality and our basic commitment to others. The flag affirms that without some aspiration to national unity, a free people and constitutional government cannot long endure.

Finally, the flag is an important incident of our national sovereignty. The United States--like many other nations--displays the flag to signify national ownership and protection. By pronouncements in the earliest years of the Republic, the Framers of the Constitution made clear that the flag, and its physical requirements, related to the existence and sovereignty of the nation and that insults to the flag were matters of great national concern that warranted strict punitive action.

"Traditional values." "With traditional unifying elements of American language, culture and heritage fraying...." "...insults to the flag were matters of great national concern that warranted strict punitive action." Scare you to death? It ought to.

The FPA is not only unnecessary and hysterical, it is so vague that no one has any idea what it really means and what could be the consequences of its passage.