"Why is it that, next to the birth-day of the Saviour of the World, your most joyous and most venerated festival returns on this day [4th of July]? . . . Is it not that, in the chain of human events, the birth-day of the nation is indissolubly linked with the birth-day of the Saviour? That it forms a leading event in the progress of the gospel dispensation? Is it not that the Declaration of Independence first organized the social compact on the foundation of the Redeemer's mission upon earth? That it laid the corner stone of human government upon the first precepts of Christianity?" ---John Quincy Adams, 61st Anniversary of the Signing of the Declaration, Newburyport, July 4, 1837.

"To consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions [is] a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as other men and not more so. They have with others the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps. Their maxim is boni judicis est ampliare jurisdictionem [good justice is broad jurisdiction], and their power the more dangerous as they are in office for life and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves." ---Thomas Jefferson to W. Jarvis, 1820.

Since the highly self-esteemed Tom "Dungheap" Harkin is 'my' United States Senator, I like to keep front-and-center this excerpt from Stolen Valor: How the Vietnam Generation Was Robbed of Its Heroes and Its History by B. G. Burkett and Glenna Whitley... During a 1992 bid for the presidency, Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa claimed that he had served as a pilot in Vietnam. His claim had surfaced eight years before, during a 1984 bid for reelection to the Senate, when Harkin boasted that he had served one year in Vietnam flying F-4s and F-8s on combat air patrols and photo-reconnaissance support missions. Challenged by Sen. Barry Goldwater, Harkin did a quick shuffle, claiming that he had actually flown combat sorties over Cuba during the sixties. Harkin finally admitted that he had not seen combat but had served as a ferry pilot stationed in Atsugi, Japan, flying aircraft to be repaired from Atsugi to the Phillipines. When pressed by reporters to explain how much time he had really spent in Vietnam, Harkin estimated that over a year, he flew in and out of Vietnam a dozen or so times. But Harkin's military record showed no Vietnam service decorations. He finally conceded he had not flown combat air patrols in Vietnam and began describing himself as a Vietnam era vet.
On a Flag Protection Amendment Lesser nations founded on bad principles (e.g. USSR, Cuba, Iran) should protect their symbols, lest they be desecrated every hour of every day by the lowly serfs they call citizens. Our nation needs no such ban. Our nation is strong enough and good enough to weather any assault on its symbols. Throughout our history and into the foreseeable future, those very few who desecrate our flag only reveal themselves for what they are. They're ignorant. They are worthy of our ridicule as much as they are worthy of our scorn. If you want to see more flags desecrated in a single week than you've seen in your lifetime, go ahead and get your ban passed. Such a restriction on our First Amendment rights would be the latest and most significant in a series of steps toward our nation becoming everything our Founding Fathers did NOT want. In view of McCain-Feingold and some recent SCOTUS rulings (e.g. eminent domain), it's no wonder there's renewed talk of the flag protection amendment! If the time should ever come when our nation is sufficiently mired in tyranny -- again, look where we're headed if you need to be reminded why the Founding Fathers did NOT protect the flag (those inalienable rights are more sacred than this or any nation) -- I reserve the right to burn MY flag as a symbol of my hatred of tyrannical nations. You do whatever you want with your own flag. Protect it with your life if you wish. That's your right every bit as much as it is my right to do with my property as I wish. If and when I am ever driven to the point of burning my flag, it will only happen in perilous times after a great amount of thought. And, given how perilous things will have to be in order for the time to have come, burning the flag will surely express the sum total of those thoughts more clearly and succinctly than words ever could. By that point, words will be cheap. Sure, today -- but, not as much as yesterday -- anyone who burns a U.S. flag is likely just an emotional ignoramus. But, if the time comes when things are bad enough, instead of hippies, we might find it's the patriots who are doing it, just like any who burned the Union Jack in the mid-1770s. People shouldn't kid themselves into believing there could never be a time when flag burning isn't just for ignorant hippies. (That's the same sort of naivete that leads people to believe we don't need a Second Amendment.) Look around. Read the news of where Congress—a Republican Congress no less—and the courts are taking us. Something tells me we "ain't seen nothin' yet". Surely you'll have to agree the idea of tyrannical gov't is increasingly less far-fetched. The Founding Fathers didn't adopt the Bill of Rights because of the government they'd founded. They adopted the Bill of Rights because of what that government could become under the wrong circumstances. [Insert any number of your favorite Founding Fathers quotes here.] When it comes to chipping away at the Bill of Rights, the liberals are doing plenty. It's frustrating and ultimately sad to see so many so-called "conservatives" taking up the liberals' pickaxes to do their dirty work on this particular issue -- as if doing so makes the "conservative" flag-wavers more patriotic than the liberals? Hah! (Superficially, at best.)
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