1st Amendment, 2nd Commandment and Textile Worship
By: The Essayist | 26Jun1999
|
Religion, it seems, is always accompanied by its detractors -- some of whom are much more active than others. Rather than assuming that the neighbor's beliefs work for him/her, that s/he should be able to revere his/her gods/goddesses in peace, human nature has antagonism built right in (at no extra charge). We often feel inspired to capitalize the T of our own truth and decide the neighbor is wrong, worshipping false gods, idolatrous -- maybe even demonic. If we get really vicious -- or are convinced that it is the will of our own god to do so -- we go out of their way to destroy the neighbors' sacred icons.
"But thus shall ye deal with them; ye shall destroy their altars, and break down their images, and cut down their groves, and burn their graven images with fire." Those who demolished sacred images were called iconoclasts, from a Medieval Greek word meaning 'image breaker'. In the Byzantine Empire in the 8th and 9th centuries, many religious works of art were destroyed by zealous Christian iconoclasts. The word has been generalized a bit since it was coined. These days, most iconoclasts are actively opposed to a generally respected idea or institution, but they don't physically destroy sacred images -- usually. I would like to point out that in America (where I live), destroying a religious icon is not -- in and of itself -- illegal. If the iconoclast were to destroy an object belonging to another person, that would be property damage, which is illegal. But if I owned a statue of the Buddha, a glow-in-the-dark-plastic Good Shepherd, a picture of his Mom, an engraving of the triple-goddess Brigid and a Native American totem pole, I could napalm them all. I could bury the ashes, plant sagebrush over it and hang it with garish Christmas lights and this would be perfectly legal. I'm not inclined to do this since I actually show more respect for other people's belief systems in real life than I let on in my writing. My point: there are actions that are tasteless, annoying and infuriating -- but still legal. Long ago, our courts determined that blasphemy -- insulting a god -- could not be a criminal offense, given our Bill of Rights.
"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; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." Iconoclasts -- in either the original or figurative sense -- may be unpleasant and rude. They may severely piss off other people. Nevertheless, what they do is not government's business.
"Our rulers can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscious we never submitted, we could never submit. We are answerable for them to our God. The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."
Q: How is burning the American flag an expression of opinion, and therefore covered by the First Amendment? In case you haven't noticed, there hasn't been a lot of flag burning going on lately. So why, on 24June1999 did the House of Representatives pass a proposal to amend the U.S. Constitution to remove citizens' rights -- for the first time since the 18th Amendment instituted Prohibition? The proposed amendment would authorize "the Congress to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States."
"This amendment would give Congress the power to dictate to the American people how they can and cannot express themselves. It would allow Congress to prohibit a particular expression -- to outlaw a particular thought."
Why is the flag of our nation so important to these congresswankers that they are willing to go against all traditional American precedence and attempt to make iconoclasty illicit in the case of this one object? There is an answer, and we will find it buried in a key word used in this proposal. Don't forget that the vast majority of our representatives are attorneys. Much like writers, they tend to be careful with their use of the language. (On the other hand, if you read the Congressional Record
des·e·crate: OK, so desecrate is the opposite of 'consecrate'. We should look that up:
con·se·crate: And of course, the root of both desecrate and consecrate is related to another common English word...
sa·cred: Are you seeing what I'm seeing? Or did you already know something that I've missed all this time? The form of iconoclasty that 305 of our Representatives propose to make unlawful isn't merely the generic opposition to a specific idea or institution. By itself, simply showing disrespect for a piece of cloth couldn't possibly be consequential enough to trigger such disregard for the principles of freedom. I have little respect for politicians, but even I cannot imagine they would blatantly misuse their authority for such a petty reason. The only thing that makes sense is what is indicated by their use of language: they consider the American flag to be a sacred object, an icon in the traditional sense. To these people, the flag is an object much holier than a Buddha statue or a crucifix or pentagram. They are willing to make special provisions to protect each copy of it from being 'profaned' by hippie children of darkness -- when similar provisions do not exist for genuine religious icons.
"I ask members to give themselves a vision, Iwo Jima, and the men that put up that American flag. Now allow some hippie to go up there and burn it." (Well, if your cause doesn't have enough virtue, there's still vacuous demagoguery. These people make decisions affecting the whole country? Have they no shame?) The inability to understand the physical abuse of a flag as an outrageous (but protected) form of expression could be attributed to malicious stupidity...
"Burning the flag is burning the flag, not making a speech." ... but it is more likely old-fashioned religious zealousness. The item they feel they need to protect is not just a collection of colored textiles emblematic of America. They view it as a sacred symbol, an icon representing deity. It appears to me that 305 legislators view America the way other people think of God, and its flag is a sanctified symbol which requires proper obeisance -- as defined by the High Priests of symbolism over substance.
"If a jerk burns a flag, America is not threatened. If a jerk burns a flag, democracy is not under siege. If a jerk burns a flag, freedom is not at risk and we are not threatened. My colleagues, we are offended; and to change our Constitution because someone offends us is, in itself, unconscionable."
"You shall have no other gods before Me. You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth. You shall not worship them or serve them..." Within days of giving an official stamp of government approval to a specific religious document (in violation of the First Amendment) they are attempting to turn the American flag into an object of worship, in violation of the Jewish Commandments (also in violation of the First Amendment). A fundamentalist Christian or orthodox Jew would likely call their deification of the flag idolatry.
"The first commandment concerns the object of our worship, Jehovah, and him only (v. 3): Thou shalt have no other gods before me.... The second commandment refers to the worship we are to render to the Lord our God. It is forbidden to make any image or picture of the Deity, in any form, or for any purpose; or to worship any creature, image, or picture." Robert Aderholt, the congressweasel that added the Ten Commandments amendment to H.R. 1501 was also a co-sponsor of this very proposal that violates one of those commandments. Actually, most of the congresspersons that voted for one also voted for the other. So are they that stupid, that evil or both? Even ignoring the constitutional considerations (they certainly did!) for a moment, why would these people vote to officially sanction a religious document about which obviously have no clue? Whatever the hell they are trying to pull over the eyes of citizens, our Representatives aren't even capable of consistency while they are pulling it! Maybe I'm a fool but I'm not too worried about this proposed constitutional amendment. It would have to get through the Senate, and that seems unlikely. Even if the Senate is as full of political whores as the House, it would still have to be ratified by 38 States. If that happened, however, this country wouldn't be worth the allegedly sacred rag that represents it after all. I might find it necessary to burn items a lot more serious than holy textiles -- as an act of protest, of course. I have a certain amount of respect for the American flag because it represents a free country I learned about in school. Maybe what I learned and reality aren't the same thing, but the country is not at all the same thing as the government that is running it, of course.
|
Before an icon was a little image on your computer screen that opens applications, the word generically referred to a
pictorial representation. Long before that, 'icon' referred specifically to a sacred image -- a drawing, engraving, painting or statue that represented a deity. An icon might be venerated by a person who believed in the god or goddess depicted by the icon. Opponents of that religion might refer to the same object as an idol, with a negative connotation.
When the chosen icon represents an idea or institution -- as opposed to a deity -- iconoclasty (if that wasn't a word before, it is now) is not blasphemy, it is protest. Sometimes, the act is an expression of outrage and this has been displayed by publicly burning the icon. During the turbulent 1960s, draft cards were burned to protest the military draft and our involvement in Vietnam. Brassieres were burned in objection to the male domination of society. National flags were burned to express dissatisfaction with government policies. In those good old days, police officers wearing American flags on their uniform shirts arrested people for wearing American flags on their pants, since -- by some bizarre trick of logic -- only the latter was deemed to be illegal. By 1989, when the Supreme Court struck them down as violating the free speech rights guaranteed by the First Amendment, forty-eight states had laws specifically banning burning the American flag. Congress reacted by passing an anti-desecration but in 1990, the Court negated it.
Here's a bit of irony for you. Just six days previous to this proposal, the same House amended a juvenile crime bill to allow States to mandate that the following be displayed on property owned or administered by the States:
| Be informed when new content is added. | Email a Link to this page. | Email the SOB who publishes this. |