My e-mail Inbox tells me they’re up to it again: Congress is putting aside trivia such as Iraq, tropical storms, Halliburton’s wishlist, subpoenas, the price of oil, etc., and focusing the full glare of its attention to the diabolical act of burning American flags, a menace that threatens us all. It doesn’t matter that, as research shows, acts of flag-burning by American citizens are extremely rare and occur only at moments of intense crisis (wouldn’t it be nice if Congress decided to deal with the causes rather than the symptoms for this?).

Somebody, somewhere, might decide to do it, and not even E Wesp’s cool head could rein in the passions that would ensue.

That folks in Gaza, Cuba, Yemen, Iran and so forth regularly burn American flags (but only when a television crew is in the offing) is well known. Maybe it’s not fair that they should have that freedom while freedom-loving Americans are about to lose it! I think I’ll use that argument and see how far it takes me.

But getting back to the Clear and Present Danger: doing harm to a symbol is an offense and an aggression only if people are unable to make the distinction between a symbol and the thing it represents. Holy semiotics, Batman! Just yesterday I wrapped my trash in a newspaper bearing pictures of politicians and movie stars, what will I do when I find their lawyers all on my doorstep tomorrow? Maybe we have sunk to that level; maybe it is all about pieces of cloth. Maybe we all deserve to live in North Korea. As E Wesp reminds us, the leftist mind is crafty, and you shouldn’t put it past those Brie-eating Volvo-drivers to concoct a flag with fourteen stripes, fifty-one stars, or some other diabolical combination that looks enough like a real American flag to fool a Congressman when it’s alight, but provides a scanty legal cover to the scofflaw. What to do about this problem?

As you can see, I’ve moved past the exaltation of principles and am now musing on the practicalities of the Flag Desecration Amendment. The thing about symbols is that they are not physically delimitable. Somebody can always turn out another example of a symbol and do something to it. Therein lies the weakness of the effort to prevent Flag Desecration (henceforth FD). We need to take vigorous measures.

First: the flag must be copyrighted, and defense of the copyright be delegated to Disney’s and the RIAA’s most chin-leading lawyers. No one shall display a Flag™ without prior authorization, which will require signing an End-User License Agreement stipulating the purposes to which said Flag™ may and may not be put.

Second, all currently admitted “flags” shall be declared invalid and retired from circulation. The set of Flags™ must be a finite and traceable inventory. Counterfeiters will be prosecuted. A Flag™ must bear a serial number and be presented for annual inspection at the Office of Flag Control, failing which the annual license to display same shall be revoked. Those citizens who, having secured Flag™ licenses in the past, are unable to produce their Flag™ for inspection, shall be deemed to have committed FD and upon such discovery, shall be handed over to the Office of FD Prevention (a division of the Office of Homeland Security, and appropriately so, for the map is the territory!) for indictment or perhaps (since they have offended against America, and America is not mocked) Guantánamo.

Like millions of Americans, I’ve suffered from FD for years. Now there’s a remedy. Like the Congressional amendment, it’s worse than the cure, but at least it’s practicable.

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