House Approves Flag Amendment

Re “Free Speech Is Not for Burning,” editorial, June 17:

Justice William J. Brennan Jr. reasoned that punishing the burning or desecration of the flag would destroy the freedom that the flag represents; the flag being an emblem of that freedom. It seems as though the majority of the American public does not like the idea of destroying that emblem.

The Supreme Court building is the emblem of the highest law in the land. If I don’t like some of the laws, I would suspect that burning down the Supreme Court building would be OK in Brennan’s mind, since it is just an expression of “free speech.” Destroying anything is different than “free speech.” Are lawyers before the Supreme Court bench allowed unrestricted speech? I think not.

BOB BERGSTROM

Woodland Hills

* Your editorial clearly defends the right to burn the American flag as an expression of the freedom of speech that the U.S. Constitution guarantees its citizens. But it seems to me that this “freedom of speech” business has a double standard, since anyone can burn the U.S. flag as an expression of protest, but no one can criticize, not even jokingly, a person or group, especially if a member or part of an ethnic or religious group, without being ostracized by the media, to the point of losing one’s job or political or social clout.

Where is the freedom of expression in these cases?

GINA PEREZ

San Gabriel

* C’mon, Norman Palley (letter, June 17), use your common sense.

You say, “There is no such thing as the flag of the United States.” When you recite the Pledge of Allegiance, do you begin with, “I pledge allegiance to a representation close enough to be considered a flag”? A flag is a flag is a flag.

And nobody is going to be jailing anyone for burning a stamp with a flag on it or any other such nonsense. The amendment would be enforced to stop those idiots who set a torch to Old Glory in a public place to make some misguided statement. And it’s about time.

LLOYD PEYTON

Los Angeles

* The idea that Republicans wish to amend the Constitution in order to illustrate “the ideological differences between their conservative agenda and that of the Democrats” (June 13) is absurd. I’ve always been taught that the Constitution’s amendments serve to outline and secure our rights as free people, not to abridge them. Let’s not render the Constitution’s very text today’s partisan battlefield.

I fail to see, too, why we are so willing to alter the Constitution over the flag, claiming its authors could not have foreseen the “necessity” of a flag-protection amendment, but are not willing to even consider removing or altering an amendment whose perhaps good-natured intent has resulted in the proliferation of handguns and firearm deaths. I don’t understand why lawmakers and well-meaning veterans are ready to change our nation’s finest document in order to protect a symbolic piece of cloth, but are not willing to alter it to protect the lives of the citizens that star-spangled cloth represents.

LESLIE J. MADSEN

Long Beach

* I think that we should pass strong laws so that no disgruntled imbecile can burn our flag like some dirty old rag. Free speech means speaking out or expounding your opinions with a pen. Every citizen in this land should be reminded that all a mother or wife receives after burying her son or husband who gave his precious, young life fighting for us and our country is that piece of cloth.

ENA TINKHAM

Los Angeles

* It seems the only group more passionate than the Republicans about jailing flag burners is the Chinese government. Then, of course, the good old boys who brought you the Tiananmen Square massacre are similarly obsessed with what citizens can say, read, view and do in private.

MIKE KERRIGAN

Redondo Beach