A
Benediction on the Occasion of National Flag Burning Day
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?
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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