On a normal summer morning in Salida, the air is so clear that you can almost count the rocks on 14,420-foot Mount Harvard 35 miles away. That peak would be the loftiest mountain in 47 of our 50 states, but in Colorado, it is merely the highest point in Chaffee County.
The summit does have a useful name. Fellow college dropout Allen Best and I climbed it from Horn Fork Basin about 25 years ago. Allen finally got a degree, but when I am asked about my education, I can truthfully reply, “I went to Harvard, and I went as high as it was possible to go there.”
One morning last week, Harvard was lost in the haze, as were closer fourteeners like Princeton and Antero. The rocky Devil’s Armchair on Mount Ouray appeared soft and fluffy, as if it had been upholstered. The Angel of Shavano snow formation, down to one wing this time of year, was barely distinguishable; the summit was lost in the murky atmosphere. The “S” on Tenderfoot Hill still loomed over Salida, but the Arkansas Hills behind it were swathed in swirling rosy mist, giving that scraggly range an almost romantic aura.
Obviously, our valley had filled with smoke from a big fire somewhere. Hoping that the source wasn’t nearby, I checked the news.Given what I heard from Washington, this air pollution must have been the drifting smoke from millions of burning American flags. But Congress was on the job. To keep this from happening again, the House of Representatives had approved, by more than the requisite 2-1 majority, a proposed constitutional amendment which will soon go to the Senate, and if approved there by a two-thirds vote, to the states. If 38 states ratify it, Amendment XXVIII of the federal Constitution will state, “The Congress shall have power to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States.”
This comes about because previous flag-protection statutes, both state and federal, had been ruled unconstitutional; federal courts have held that burning a flag at a public protest is a variety of free speech and therefore protected by the First Amendment. So to make it possible to fine or imprison someone for burning a flag, the Constitution has to be amended.
It’s hard to imagine how such a law would be enforced. My American Heritage Dictionary defines “desecrate” as “to abuse the sacredness of.” There must be millions of other Americans who were raised, as I was, in fundamentalist churches where we were taught that no physical object is sacred. To ascribe sacredness to any chunk of matter, be it a golden calf or a piece of colored cloth waving in the breeze, is thus a form of idolatry, and as Leviticus 19:4 reminds us, “turn ye not unto idols.”
And should any worldly government, including the Congress of the United States, have the power to declare what is “sacred” and what isn’t? It might be difficult for prosecutors to prove that a flag was sacred in order to prove that some protester “desecrated” it with a butane lighter.
Suppose someone made a 51-star flag and ignited it. It would offend just as readily as a 50-star flag, but it wouldn’t be “the flag of the United States.” Could Congress craft a law to cover that?
Suppose I start a fire some winter morning with an old newspaper, one with a flag printed in it somewhere; is that a violation of whatever federal law this amendment will enable? Is a muddied flag bumper sticker an example of “desecration”? What about the effect when the Postal Service puts a cancellation mark over a flag stamp?
Washington must be a wonderful place, where people have time to concern themselves with such matters. Out here, in what is sometimes known as the “real world,” we know that the smoke isn’t coming from flag combustion, but from forest fires. And we know that Congress is talking about cutting millions from federal fire-management programs when it’s not trying to protect us from flag-burners.
Ed Quillen of Salida is a former newspaper editor whose column appears Tuesday and Sunday.
