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BY BEN JONES
Rappahannock News
Contributing Writer
Somebody stole my flag. An American flag. Old Glory. Tore it down from our store and absconded with it. Now ain’t that a hell of a note? So I’ve been thinking a lot about flags lately.
When I was a freshman Congressman from Georgia, I caught a lot of flak for vigorously opposing a Constitutional Amendment which would prohibit flag ‘'•desecration.” To me, the amendment was UnAmerican, putting an asterisk on the First Amendment to prohibit an unpopular political expression. The U.S. Constitution is the oldest forking governing document in the world. It ain’t broke and it don’t need Axin’. For what it Is worth, that is by definition a “conservative” position.
The idea of “protecting” a mass produced cloth symbol by diminishing the freedom implicit in our great Bill of Rights is a visceral appeal to what is surely heartfelt patriotism. It is a well intentioned overreaction to a rare but clearly political act, however obnoxious. As someone smarter than I whose name escapes me once said, “Popular expression doesn’t need protection.”
Well, anyhow, as my impeccable sense of timing would have it, three days after my vote against the flag amendment, I was the keynote speaker for the Georgia State American Legion Convention. A number of the fellows wished to express themselves politically by desecrating a
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