The
closer it is to an election, the more politically fashionable
protecting graven images becomes. This year, a Senate
vote on a constitutional amendment to protect the U.S.
flag could draw John Kerry into a Dukakis
Trap. Will the current Senator from Massachusetts vote
to protect fabric and amend the constitution? Or will he side
with Nathan Callahan, calling for observance of more important
issues?
Originally
Posted June 25, 2003
A
Benediction on the Occasion of National Flag Burning
Day
 IN
THE NEAR FUTURE:
It’s a glorious
time to be celebrating.
Back when we first
burned the American flag at this memorial, the old national holidays
were losing their glow. Memorial Day and Labor Day were no more
than opportunities for white sales. Presidents’ Day was a
recreational weekend. Martin Luther King’s Birthday had been
co-opted by milquetoast opportunists. The Fourth of July was more
about pyrotechnics than independence. It was some kind of sorry.
We needed to spark up our national spirit again.
Youknowhatimtalkinabout.
Today, we are
here to honor those brave Americans who sacrificed the flag so that
freedom could survive. Flag Burning Day was their vision — a
kind of cleansing of the national palette, a rejuvenation of the
spirit of liberty and justice, a rekindling of love for this jack
nation.
Hey nonny ding
dong, alang alang alang.
This day was born
of a dark time. It was the turn of the century. George W. Bush was
president — a flag waver and a self-proclaimed “Real
American.”
Say again?
George W. Bush
didn’t have any affection for this country. He went AWOL after
joining the Air Force. He was the first president with an arrest
record. He spent
the national surplus, bankrupted the treasury, and achieved
the biggest
annual deficit in history. He set the record for cutting unemployment
benefits for out-of-work Americans. He gutted
healthcare benefits for war veterans. He turned the world against
us. Love
America?
Whatchubeensmokin?
Every time George
W. Bush downloaded into videoframe, people waved the American flag.
What were they thinking? Were they blind to the fact of who they
were? Was it a Pavlovian malady? Mass hysteria? Fanaticism? We never
found out. Looking back we ask: What’s the flag got to do
with this anti-American adolescent, inarticulate, freakass, cowboy-hat-wearing,
ballot-eating zombie? If Congress hadn’t been so concerned
with paybacks and paychecks, George W. Bush would have been exiled.
Instead, chest
thumping, mall shopping, and duct taping became national pastimes.
Even when W. Bush lied and
used plagiarized documents
to justify a war on Iraq, our Congress waved their flags and responded
with cyclones of applause.
Ba-doh, ba-doo
ba-doodle-ay.
What a blessing — the
soul-satisfying opportunity to taste the glory of a righteous will
and run the traitors out of office.
June 3, 2003. We are here to commemorate that day of awakening when the
United States Congress approved an amendment to the Constitution to criminalize
flag burning. The vote was 300 to 125. For shame.
"If
we allow its defacement," Ohio Republican Congressman
Steve Chabot said (back when politics was perception), "we
allow our country's gradual decline."
What Congress
failed to notice was that our country was already in a STEEP decline
. . . and their own ignorance was the cause of it.
So what happened?
Y’all know.
This flag of ours
was so abused and desecrated in the name of profit and power, that
the people of this great nation rose up together and said, in the
words of that great old hymn, “We Gotta Raze It, in Order
to Build It Up Again.”
Letstalkaboutit.
Flag Burning Day.
It began as a day of national decontamination — a day to expel
the stench of the Bush Administration. A day to end warped notions
of patriotism, gaudy jingoist sound-bites and simple-minded shoulder
graphics. A day to end puritanical smugness and pre-emptive war.
We — the
people — refused to allow our rights to be taken away by color-coded
fears. We refused to condemn others simply for their beliefs. We
defended freedom, not an emblem on a stick.
Knowhatimsayin?
One by one, flags
burned, the physics of the moment emancipating our light and energy:
Carbon fuel uniting with oxygen to fashion carbon dioxide; fabric
animating, crumpling and shifting like dozing elephants; ethics
and icons colliding.
Before the altar
of freedom our flag burned for a corrupt Supreme Court that twisted
the arms of justice.
Our flag burned
for Florida’s election thief, Katherine
Harris.
Our flag burned
for Enron’s Ken
Lay.
Our flag burned
for global war profiteers like Halliburton.
Our flag burned
for John Poindexter, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and John Ashcroft.
Our flag burned
for an economy that ignored the honest labor of working men and
women and favored the speculators and shell games of Wall Street.
Our flag burned
for a health and education system that put our youth in prison instead
of schools.
Our flag burned
for a government subservient to greed.
Our flag burned
for a lying, self-oriented, sackashit President who had the audacity
to blaspheme, "I'm a uniter, not a divider." May a disuniter
like George W. Bush never darken our country’s doorway again.
Break it down
like this:
As flags burned
from sea to shining sea, the world answered back with affirmation.
England joined us straight away in celebrating this day of conflagration.
France, a bit jealous, followed suit. Today, as I stand before you,
nearly every nation in the free world has a National Flag Burning
Day.
Let us again strike
a match and burn a flag in tribute to those who lit the fire of
freedom. We are not only survivors of a dark era in our nation’s
history, but inheritors of new emancipation — an emancipation
of mind and spirit.
Together we stand — one
fantastically conglomerated, fired-up, mixed-bag-of-nuts nation.
Life could be
a dream. Sh-boom. Sh-boom.
In those olden
and prophetic words of Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy,
I say to you, "It
is poignant but fundamental that the flag protects those who hold
it in contempt."
All the more reason
to love it. So be it. Hang it on me.
When spirit becomes
symbol, heart becomes dogma. Today, we are free. Long may it burn.
Long may it wave.
— Nathan Callahan, June 25, 2003
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