It was about a year ago that my ex-partner and I got into an argument on the subject of flag-burning. She wasn't the "America, love it or leave it," "my country, right or wrong" type - she respected governmental institutions, but didn't hesitate to criticize national policy. However, she was disgusted by those malcontents who burn the American flag publicly in an act of protest, and then cite the "freedom of speech" clause of the First Amendment to those who would condemn their demonstration. She was perhaps even more disgusted that the Supreme Court has their back. "Can you believe anyone would think the Founding Fathers meant their words to be interpreted that way?" she asked indignantly.
It was a rhetorical question, but I answered it anyway. "Actually," I said, "I believe that's exactly what the Founding Fathers would have wanted."
She wasn't particularly interested in what I had to say in support of my position; instead, she became increasingly angry and finally delivered what she thought was the death-blow to my argument: the accusation of hypocrisy. "I bet you wouldn't be defending them if they were burning books!" she snarled.
My initial response was just what she had expected it would be: "That's different!" Of course, she insisted that it wasn't different at all, and I was just being contrary for its own sake; troubled by a sudden unease with my own position, and unwilling to continue what had been an invigorating discussion as a hostile argument, I wisely decided to drop the matter - with her. In my own mind, the subject remained open as I sought to reconcile my feelings about flag-burning and book-burning with my understanding of free speech in general.
My initial position, the one she didn't care to listen to, was hardly in favor of flag-desecration. I think burning a flag is, at best, a rather juvenile way to make a point. There may have been a time when it was a fresh and original statement; now it smacks of crass sensationalism. Burning a flag is a good way to draw attention to yourself without needing to have anything new or insightful to say. As political protests go, desecrating the flag is roughly equivalent to flipping your parents the bird when they won't let you borrow the car on Friday night: if we didn't think you were mature enough before, we're certainly not about to reconsider now.
If flag-burning isn't Constitutionally protected speech, however, then just what is it? Criminal conduct, worthy of punishment? Is that what the Founding Fathers would have wanted? Their convictions spurred them to engage in outright rebellion against a government they had been taught to respect and a king they had been raised to revere. As Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army, George Washington was taking arms against a flag under which he had once fought. Sympathizers to the cause of colonial independence weren't entirely above crass demonstrations; the Boston Tea Party comes to mind. (Had their actions not been "vindicated by history," those who participated in the destruction of the tea would be remembered today, to the extent that they were remembered at all, as vandals and economic terrorists.) I don't believe the Founding Fathers would have any more sympathy for flag-burners than I do, but I can't believe they would have any less, either. The moment we bring the force of law against any ideological expression that poses no direct threat to the personal safety or property rights of another, the concept of free speech becomes meaningless. Burning a flag may be profoundly disrespectful to those who fought and died to establish or preserve what that flag represents - but the Founding Fathers had seen firsthand the consequences of legislating respect. They were born into a world where a person could be fined, jailed, or even executed for criticizing the British government. They knew what lay at the end of that slippery slope, and they didn't want to go there.
There were times, growing up, that I told my parents, in a rush of anger, that I hated them. My father would punish me for such an outburst. My mother encouraged me to express what I felt, but she wasn't manipulated by it either. Guess which one I have genuine respect for today? The fact that a crass statement of contempt for the American government is treated as protected speech by that very government is central, in my mind, to what America at its finest is capable of being. Flag-burners undermine their own argument when they turn for support to the very institutions for which they profess such disdain - which they must surely know isn't something they could take for granted in many other parts of the world. There's a poem extolling the American soldier that ends with the stirring observation, "It is the soldier, who salutes the flag, who serves under the flag, and whose coffin is draped by the flag, who allows the protester to burn the flag." It is the very fact that s/he is fighting for the right of others to express contempt for something s/he holds dear - because s/he's fighting for freedom, and that's what freedom means - that makes the soldier's sacrifice so very noble.
The day they take away my right to burn the flag is the day I burn one.
And what of book-burning? Part of me believes that it truly is different. To desecrate a flag is to show contempt for a nation; to destroy a book is to show contempt for an idea. Nations are transient, even ephemeral, things, and they are only as meritorious as the ideas their governments and citizens put into practice. Of course, some ideas most certainly are worthy of contempt, but we need them all. To hide from an idea serves only to make it more dangerous. One of the most powerful moments I've ever experienced on television comes at the end of an episode of The Waltons, "The Fire Storm." The central controversy of the episode involves John-Boy's decision to publish excerpts from Mein Kampf in his newspaper. Many of the townspeople, including the Rev. Matthew Fordwick, openly express the desire to remain ignorant of Hitler's ideas; they fail to make the distinction between information and propaganda. At the climax of the episode, Rev. Fordwick gathers a bunch of German books, including Mein Kampf, and prepares to throw them into a bonfire before the assembled townsfolk. After all, Hitler's been burning American books, and even Bibles! John-Boy rushes over from the crowd and grabs Mein Kampf out of the Reverend's hands. "I read that a foreign tyrant was publishing his plans to take over the world, and was carrying out those plans," he shouts. "I thought you ought to have the opportunity to know about it . . . that's freedom, as far as I can see it. And if you choose not to know about it, that's freedom too - but if you take a book, and if you burn this book, then you can't know about it, and you've had your freedom taken away from you, you understand me?" He picks up another book from the pile, and offers it to a neighbor who can read German. After she reads the first paragraph, he asks her to translate, and she does: "In the beginning, God created heaven and earth." John-Boy walks away, but after a few moments Rev. Fordwick comes after him, holding both Mein Kampf and the German Bible. "These books should be in good hands," he admits, "both of them."
One very real difference between flag-burning and book-burning is that a flag is a symbol, while a book is a medium. Destroy every American flag ever made, and there will still be a United States of America. Destroy every last copy of the Bible, or Mein Kampf, or The Communist Manifesto, or The Federalist Papers, or Pride and Prejudice, or even Chicken Soup for the Soul, Ramona the Pest, or Danielle Steel's The Promise, and something has been forever lost. There's even a word, "libricide," that refers specifically to a regime's attempt to wipe out all books that they view as a threat to their power. Etymologically, it means "the killing of a book" - as if a book were something that had a life of its own, that could truly die. The novelist Ray Bradbury was inspired by the Nazi book burnings to write Fahrenheit 451, about a prospective future in which all books are banned and subject to burning. In one stirring scene from this novel, a woman whose secret library has been discovered chooses to set herself on fire and burn along with her books. Bradbury later wrote that "when Hitler burned a book I felt it as keenly, please forgive me, as his killing a human, for in the long sum of history they are one and the same flesh."
But I don't believe my ex-partner was really attempting to suggest, even in the full-blown irrationality of ideological smugness, that the act of burning a single flag was morally equivalent to massive state-sponsored censorship. In The Waltons, Rev. Fordwick referred to his little ceremony as "a symbolic book-burning," even though he planned to throw actual books in an actual fire. What mattered to him wasn't the destruction of the books themselves, but the rejection of what those books represented. (Since there was only one person in town who could read German, destroying German books to censor their contents wouldn't have made much sense anyway.) Late last year, Florida pastor Terry Jones announced his plans to burn the Qur'an on September 11. (In the face of controversy and condemnation from political and religious spheres alike, he soon cancelled the demonstration.) Jones wasn't making an attempt to wipe the Qur'an out of existence, however much he might have liked to do so. His goal was to express and encourage hatred of the Islamic religion, not specifically to deny anyone access to its ideas.
It is this sort of book-burning - the destruction of individual volumes for the purpose of making a statement, not for censorship - that I have to compare to flag-burning. Even reframed in these terms, I want to say that book-burning is different. The sight of a book on fire is literally painful to me. I can't even bring myself to throw away a book that's falling apart and beyond repair - whether or not it's a book that I have any desire to read. When one of the stepsisters in Ever After, a film based on the story of Cinderella, throws the protagonist's cherished copy of Thomas More's Utopia into the fireplace, I shudder. I feel sick inside just watching and knowing what's going to happen. Reading Fahrenheit 451, I want simultaneously to weep and to cheer at the martyrdom of that brave woman who stands among her kerosene-doused trove of forbdden books and sets herself on fire. I'd like to believe that I would do the same.
But all of this, I am forced to admit, is sentiment. You can't base principles on sentiment, not if you believe in some degree of absolute truth and you're trying to get at it. I'm a writer, an intellectual, a borderline bibliomaniac. Books have always been my sustenance and joy, my dearest friends in a hostile world. Of course I feel an intense connection to them. It's just as natural that my ex-partner would feel strongly about the flag. Her father had been in the military, as had her first husband, and her two sons were currently enlisted. At the time we had this argument, her younger son was in Iraq on active combat duty. Watching a protester burn the flag of the country her son was fighting for must have felt like an attack on everything she loved.
(It may be unduly crass of me to point this out, but I believe most of the Founding Fathers would have had a stronger emotional distaste for book-burning than flag-burning. The Revolutionary War was fought for an idea, not a country. There was no United States as we know it until some years after the colonies were granted their independence, and it was still the better part of a century before most Americans learned to think of themselves as "Americans" first rather than citizens of their various states. As for the seven key Founding Fathers identified by historian Richard B. Morris, only two of them had any military experience, and only George Washington was anything like a career soldier. The others were intellectuals, writers, statemen, political philosophers, lawyers - men who understood and lived by the power of words in the finest sense.)
Perhaps it was foolish of me to attempt to engage her mind on a topic so close to her heart. Certainly I shouldn't be surprised that she wasn't in a mood to listen to logic or subtlety, or that she turned on my reasoning with an emotional red herring. (I'm not above that kind of thinking myself; it's easy for me to feel smug when I consider that she wouldn't likely get at all worked up over the burning of an Iraqi flag, while I wouldn't support the burning of, say, The Sacrament of Abortion any more than I would the burning of the complete works of Shakespeare. Doesn't that just prove I've got the moral high ground?) But that red herring gave me a lot to think about, and I've come to a conclusion, one which I don't much like. But then, there's nothing about what's right that's inherently pleasant or expedient.
Book-burning is contemptible. For reasons both emotional and ideological, I consider it an abomination, far more so than the burning of a flag. As an ideological gesture, however, I am forced to admit that "symbolic" book-burning does fall into the realm of free speech. Maybe I wouldn't pour water on a book-burner if s/he were on fire, but I would protest the jailing of one. As a writer, I must support the biblioclast for exactly the same reason that the soldier spills his/her blood for the ingrates who desecrate the flag: because it's freedom I'm pushing for, and that includes the freedom to be wrong, to be contemptible even - and without that freedom, everything I am and believe in is meaningless.
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