Pledging allegiance to the Flag & for which it stands

What will they think of next, these leaders of the free world, these sanctimonious scoundrels in seats of power, these madmen running an asylum after treating the public to the “Gay Marriage Amendment” and “the Debate over Iraq” was a question recently answered when 66 Senators and 286 members of the House voted in favor of a Constitutional Amendment to give Congress the “power to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States”.

I wondered just how many people in the “land of the free and home of the brave” have actually burned an American flag in the last 25 years that created the necessity for such an Amendment to the Constitution. Personally I’m fascinated with former Sen. Pat Schroeder’s (D-CO) perception when years ago she stated that all debate over a flag amendment could be resolved with passage of a law mandating that all American flags be made from flame retardant material.

The recent entertainment provided by our bought and paid for representatives in Congress over the “Flag Amendment” compelled me to consider Samuel Johnson’s observation once that “patriotism is the last resort of a scoundrel”. Today it seems that the “Flag Amendment” would indicate that “the flag is the last resort of a scoundrel” for Johnson was not against “patriotism” but he was adamantly opposed to “false patriotism” and there is nothing more false than wrapping ones self in symbol over substance. These pretend patriots praise the flag, “the symbol” for our “American values” but abuse or ignore “the substance”, the very same “American values” for which it stands.

Indeed Majority Leader Bill Frist from Tennessee admitted without question nor shame that “Many Americans have come to see the flag as a sacred symbol of our nation and its values,” and in the same breath says “Those who dislike American values…do not have the right to desecrate a symbol like our flag…” Where is the “American value” of “liberty” in such contempt for the rights of others who are more aware of the distinction between reality and rhetoric in 21st America?

I don’t presume to know what these pretenders of virtue mean by “values” but one which I always thought of as one of our nation’s values is that all Americans have “equal rights under the law”. The “substance” the very fact of this matter is that after 200 plus years of “independence” we still do not have an Equal Rights Amendment. Gay marriage and flag desecration are the issues that carry the day in a political state of decline. What sheer rank hypocrisy to deny citizens the right to express their outrage at the “symbol” of a “value” that has yet to become a reality. In what gospel, what book, what legal document are these lofty “American values” to found in print?

Perhaps 68 percent of our representative confirm H. L. Mencken’s addition to Johnson’s dictum: “But there is something even worse: it is the first, last, and middle range of fools” as evidenced by the bills sponsor Sen. Orrin Hatch when he said “government exists because of the people…yet for too long, some unelected judges have mistakenly concluded that it is the courts that have exclusive dominion over the Constitution”.

Shouldn’t a U.S. Senator know more than anyone that “governments are instituted among men to secure the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and government derives their just powers from the consent of the governed…” Obviously Sen. Hatch conveniently forgets that it was these same “unelected judges” who created an extra legal ruling which didn’t exist and never will exit again to select a president. When the governed did not give their consent why didn't Sen. Hatch strongly object to that egregious violation of the “American value” that we are “a nation of laws, not men”? Another “value”, the “substance” of which Sen. Hatch ignores while wrapping himself in the “symbol” of his “flag amendment”.

And shouldn’t a U.S. Senator know more than anyone that the Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the land and it is the constitutional right and responsibility of the Supreme Court to interpret the “supreme law of the land” and the First Amendment in the “supreme law of the land” begins with “Congress shall make no law….abridging the freedom of speech….”

The likes of Frist and Hatch are Mencken’s fools that claim to be patriots. The political hawks provide the rhetoric for a war they, nor theirs, won’t fight but they will wave the flag back home in suburbia. These are Johnson’s scoundrels. Check out who is being investigated or linked to some investigation of criminal behavior and you’ll find the names of our representatives who supported the “Flag Amendment”. And then check out their bios to find out which uniform they wore in the service of their country defending the flag and for which it stands, “American values”. These are the people Johnson had in mind as preachers and partisans of “false patriotism”.

On this 4th of July like those in the preceding decades of our democracy in decay there won’t be such displays of “true patriotism” but there will be plenty of staged fireworks, irrational exuberance, political rhetoric, and lots of flag waving, all taking place in an excessive display of false patriotism that pervades the American Empire. The Flag Amendment introduced by the party of “big brother” appeals to the passions of the masses of Americans too eager and too easily distracted from the reality that the flag they want us to worship as sacred no longer represents the “American value” of independence from the tyranny of a government which has become destructive to securing the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Since this nation will soon be celebrating its declaration of independence from tyranny perhaps we can accept the possibility that “American values”, are the ones contained in the Declaration of Independence, the ones that are “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these, are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” If these truly are “American values” then true patriotism would best be expressed by waving the American flag upside down because the symbol has become disconnected from reality and detached from the substance “for which it stands”.

NOTE: the flag can be flown upside down ‘as a signal of dire distress in instances of extreme danger to life or property,’ according to Title 36, Chap. 10, Paragraph 176 (a) of the U.S. Code.