The Best Flags are Flammable--for Our and Their Own Good

I'm a man who believes that the sabbath is any moment of liberation from uncontrollable allegiance to ideas or desires. That's why I'm suspicious of flags. They're too Pavlovian for me. The pride they instill is too laced with guilt.

I say all this because the latest it's-a-crime-to-burn-the-flag amendment lost by only one vote last week. That's too thin a margin. When such a ludicrous measure comes that close to victory, it has already won.

From a met-a-physical standpoint, the flag is the flag precisely because it can be cherished or destroyed. Yin-Yang applies to all things, even sacred objects. St. Wordplay says, Kali-Flower.

Just as Moses breaks the tablet that is the minutes of his meeting with God, a flag is a flag because it can be torn or torched. How else can it be prevented from being burial cloth or gag of free speech if it cannot serve as rag of rage? St. Wordplay says, Burn, baby, burn.

St. Wordplay and Rev. Simple Semantics both note that 'dis' is just a prefix--a preface--to honor. When a man burns a flag, he may be swearing allegiance to principles his countrymen have forgotten or betrayed. When a man burns a flag he may be exercising devotion to causes such as justice his country no longer stands for. Flag burners often suffer the tormenting conviction that their country is alienated from compassion, mercy and sanity.

I'm not a flag-waving man. It has been years since the Stars and Stripes filled me with tears. But if I were such a man, I could only be so because there were days on which I was ashamed to show the flag as well as days on which I was proud to salute it.

I'll let Wendell Berry lead the Pledge this morning:

LET US PLEDGE

Let us pledge allegiance to the flag
and to the national sacrifice areas
for which it stands, garbage dumps
and empty holes, sold out for a higher
spire or the rich church, the safety
of voyagers in golf carts, the better mood
of the stock market. Let us feast
today, though tomorrow we starve. Let us
gorge upon the body of the Lord, consuming
the earth for our greater joy in Heaven,
that fair Vactionland. Let us wander forever
in the labyrinths of our self-esteem.
Let us evolve forever toward the higher
consciousness of the machine.
The spool of our engine-driven fate
unwinds, our history now outspeeding
thought, and the heart is a beatable tool.

--Wendell Berry, from "Entries," 1994